


No Exit

by RedHawkeRevolver



Series: In thy mouth sweet as honey [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Blood bonds and enthrallment, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Drinking to Cope, Enemies to Lovers, Light Bondage, M/M, Masturbation, Mystery, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Romance, Sex and power struggles, So many tropes, Trevor and Alucard get closer than they ever thought they wanted to be, Tropes, Vampire Sex, Vampire Tropes, Voyeurism, cursing and crude language, pain play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-10-02 04:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 83,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17257520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHawkeRevolver/pseuds/RedHawkeRevolver
Summary: “Understand that if we do this, Belmont, there is no going back. There is no exit once this threshold is crossed. But we have little choice. And no time.”





	1. Death's Door

The last Belmont returned to his ancestral home two breaths from death.

It had been a bright spring day when they left Adrian to his solitude. Left him as the macabre caretaker of the world’s greatest repository of knowledge. Which was really nothing more than a derelict fortress and the musty basement full of books next door.

He was relieved to be alone then though. Some moments in life are better spent in silence and if there was one thing he learned while traveling with Belmont it was that the man was _never_ _fucking_ _silent_.

But blessed silence turns into a deafening din after a time and there were only so many tears that could be shed before disgust for one’s own melancholy set in. So he slept. In his father’s bed he slept, too tall for his childhood one and wanting somewhere to lay his head that had more humanity in it than a coffin.

While he slept, he dreamed. Most of the time they were only flashes, but the images were vividly coloured and they were accompanied by passing impressions of all the sounds, smells and textures of reality. The fleeting scenes offered him glimpses into the past, his past, his father’s past, and his mother’s, those with whom he shared blood. Whether it be by birth or by circumstance, sharing blood had strange consequences. Perhaps that was why his mother never took his father’s blood even if she had taken his name and his seed. Or perhaps that was why his father had never wanted her to. Blood was _life_. The experience of it and the danger in it, the mystery of it and the clarity that might be found in it, could connect individuals beyond the simple pumping of the stuff or the crude consumption of it. Being his father’s son, he was gifted with some small understanding of how souls could be bonded by blood. He wished he understood more, but there was no one left for him to learn from.

Still though, he felt there was something in those bloodbound dreamscapes, where the perception of time was different and it passed all too quickly. Something verging on epiphany haunted him but it was never quite close enough to grab onto, far away and moving ever farther out of reach. Then, it was gone, like a sliver of light disappearing behind a shutting door, and he was left in the dark again.

It was a dark winter’s night when they knocked on his door, frantic and insistent.

The seasons had turned while he chased dreams in his sleep. Days, weeks, months had passed without stirring him from his fitful slumber. The spring rains had come and gone without his knowledge along with summer thunder and autumn winds yet somehow the distant pounding of a tiny human fist on a massive door of iron and stone woke him.

Adrian wondered if that was how it had been for his father.

~

“God almighty Sypha, stop pounding on it! You’re going to hurt your hand for Christ’s sake. And the racket is already making my head hurt. He’s clearly not at home. Such a pity too. Let’s just go back to that last village. If we stop for a few days and rest there, I’ll be fi…”

Trevor had to stop talking when he was seized by a fit of coughs. By the time he finished hacking, he had to admit, he sounded awful and he felt even worse but trudging across the country in ankle-deep snow drifts with a pack of speakers constantly poking, prodding, dressing and redressing his wound while they shook their heads gravely was _not_ helping him in the slightest. If he could just lay down and sleep for a while…

“Bullshit, Trevor!” His eyes had started to drift shut but he snapped them open when Sypha snapped at him. “You are not fine! You will not be fine no matter what we do! _That is why we are here._ Look at yourself! You’ve barely been able to sit up for days now!”

“I’m _standing_ here, aren’t I?” He opened his arms to show her how good he was standing but it didn’t quite work out for him. The movement put him off balance and one of Sypha’s people had to steady him before he landed face first on the unforgiving flagstones of Alucard’s doorstep.

_Fucking Alucard._

_How had it come to this?_ Begging for help from _him_ of all fucking creatures. And within sight of the ruins of his family’s home no less. His father would be turning in his grave. If he had a grave. Which he didn’t. Well, whatever scattered ash was left of the man was probably twitching under six feet of frozen soil at the very least.

He almost made himself laugh at that thought but it turned into another wet cough. Sypha’s annoyingly keen eyes saw the blood that spattered into his palm. She frowned, then she started pounding on the door again.

Much to his surprise, right before he passed out, the damn door actually opened.

He vaguely registered being carried inside after that. He’d been cold outside in the snow but now he was warm, too warm, uncomfortably warm, and his tunic was getting _sticky_. He thought he must be bleeding through the dressing again. When cool hands touched him at the back of his neck, at his forehead, and briefly on his cheek, he felt a little better. It was...nice.

People were talking above him. Talking _about_ him instead of _to_ him. There was a lot of that going on lately.

“...how did this happen? And why has it been left like this for so long?”

Trevor realized he was laying horizontal in a bed. Sadly, it wasn’t the kind of horizontal bed-laying he would have wished for, but he probably wasn’t up to snuff enough at the moment to get it up, even if there was someone around he wanted to get it up for. Which there wasn’t.

It was Sypha who answered the question he’d caught the tail end of.

“It’s not as if we didn’t try to treat it, Adrian. We did the best we could. He’d already lost a great deal of blood before we found him. And it’s not just a simple wound. It must be poisoned somehow. Or…”

“Or?”

That was Alucard’s voice. Trevor decided it was time to join the conversation lest that stuck-up git think he was still out of it.

“Or cursed.” Trevor reached up to rub his eyes as he admitted to what Sypha was hesitant to say. He groaned and blinked at the candle light that seemed unexpectedly harsh. His headache was worse than before he passed out despite the soft pillows now under his head.

When he was able to fully focus his vision he saw Sypha biting her lower lip and standing next to Alucard, his brows drawn together, both of them looking down at him where he lay on the bed. It was a nice bed actually and the comfort of it _didn’t_ make the cursed wound in his gut feel worse which was more than he could say for anywhere else he’d been since he woke up amnestic in a pool of his own blood.

“Oh, come on.” He continued, making some effort to sound like himself and not like easy prey in front of a damned vampire. “We all know I look like utter shit. I feel like utter shit. It’s either cursed or infected or...something. I vote for cursed.”

“He must have been ambushed.” Sypha guessed. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

Alucard lowered his face to Trevor’s. He narrowed his unnaturally pale eyes and wrinkled his unnaturally straight nose. “Was he drunk? He reeks of alcohol _and vampire_.”

“Hey! Fuck you! _You_ reek of vampire, you fucking vampire! They poured alcohol on the wound, for all the good it did, if you must know. They should have just let me drink it.” Trevor mumbled petulantly.

A low, almost imperceptible growl vibrated out from Alucard. “It is not possible that he was bested by a simple pack of vampires.”

Trevor tried to laugh but it came out more like a weak gurgle. “Is that a compliment? How nice of you.”

“And even if it was the case that _the last of the lauded Belmont hunters_ had gotten himself so besotted with drink that he couldn’t fight off a vampire attack, why did they not just kill him? Or drink him dry. Or enslave him. Was this wound from a weapon? Or something else?”

Alucard continued to talk over him to Sypha as if he wasn’t there, or as if he was too taken by fever to grasp what they were saying. They weren’t exactly wrong. He was shivering now. Shivering and sweating at the same time. He tried to continue to listen over the sound of his teeth chattering inside his head.

“It looks like it was a weapon but he doesn’t remember anything. He was like this when we found him. There was blood everywhere but we think it was all his. There were no other bodies or signs of vampires. Can you heal it?”

Alucard leaned over him again and waited patiently until Trevor was able to refocus his eyes and meet his gaze. “I need to remove this dressing and examine the wound. It will hurt. Prepare yourself.”

“Why do you sound like you’re looking forward to undressing me? And hurting me?”

Alucard’s frown deepened. “I don’t think you quite grasp the gravity of your current situation, Belmont. Have you lost so much blood that you’ve gone daft? Do you understand that this is a _mortal wound?_ If the speakers had not brought you here, you would be dead by dawn. As it is, I am not entirely sure I can help you. Now shut up and let me look at you.”

Trevor gave in to the order more from exhaustion than fear of death or hope that he could be saved. Sypha had told Alucard exactly what he remembered of how he got himself into this situation, which was nothing at all until Sypha and her clan found him with a nasty wound in his gut that he didn’t remember getting. Even just trying to remember made his head _throb_. Whether by curse or blood loss his mind was dulled more than he was willing to own up to. He might have already died of inaction if not for Sypha’s insistence they seek Alucard’s help when it became clear the wound wasn’t going to heal on its own.

Deft hands undressed him and cool fingers delicately removed his bandages. It hurt, but not as much as he’d expected it to. Trevor chose to believe Alucard was being careful to try and avoid touching him as much as possible rather than being gentle on purpose. Distaste fit more with his aesthetic than empathy did.

“The gash isn’t deep but it has festered. This was meant to cause a painful and prolonged death. I’m frankly surprised you’ve survived this long.” Alucard sighed, long and slow.

“But you can heal it, Adrian...can’t you?” Sypha asked more urgently and she was gripping Alucard’s sleeve. He didn’t answer her for a long time. That silence, more than anything up to this point, got through Trevor’s clouded thoughts and a sick worry settled into his stomach along with the searing pain.

_This can’t be how I die. Can it?_

Trevor shut his eyes. He dozed off for a few moments but woke when Alucard spoke again.

“Leave us. I must speak with Belmont alone.”

“Wait...what? Hey…” Trevor protested. Sypha and the speakers did not. She simply rubbed his hand in support, then rubbed Alucard’s arm in thanks and left him alone, bleeding and moribund, with a vampire.

When everyone was gone, he felt the side of the bed dip under Alucard’s weight as he sat beside him. What he’d said wasn’t a lie. Dracula’s son obviously did smell of vampire. But of something else too. He’d never quite been able to put his finger on what it was. Something different. Something unique.

 _Is_ he _really the last thing I’m going to smell before I die? Why can’t it be roast chicken? Or wine?_

“You still have your Morning Star.”

Trevor cleared his throat to respond. He instinctively moved his hand to the weapon that hadn’t left his side since the moment he’d recovered it. “I...yes...I still have it.”

“And you haven’t been bitten. I can tell. You truly remember nothing of how you came to be like this? Accosted and incapacitated and yet still in possession of your weapons?”

“If I did, do you think they would have fucking dragged me half-dead all the way here to get help? From _you_ of all people.”

“Do you want help from me, Belmont?”

“I uh...I…” That was far too difficult a question to be honest about when he was at a disadvantage.

Alucard didn’t wait for him to answer, either because he intended the question to be rhetorical or he didn’t actually care. “I don’t know what happened to you any more than you do, but I will admit to you that whatever it was troubles me greatly. I’ve seen you fight, Belmont. _I’ve fought you._ Whatever did this to you, whatever _could_ do this to you…”

The sentence drifted off to nothing but a shake of his head. Trevor wasn’t in his right mind. He’d lost too much blood, was in too much pain, but he still understood what Alucard hadn’t said. Whatever did this to him, was certainly nothing _good_.

“Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of time for supposition. If you live, then we’ll see. I _can_ heal you, but without knowledge of how this cursed wound came to be, I have only one option by which to do it.”

It was getting harder to stay awake and even harder to just _think._  He couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore. Simply continuing to breathe was proving a challenge. Fortunately some deep-seeded Belmont preservation instinct was able to speak up from the bowels of his soul.

_“If you even fucking think about turning me, I will stake you right here.”_

To his credit, though Trevor hated to credit him with anything, Alucard rejected his assumption. In fact, he sounded a bit disgusted by it.

 _“Don’t be ridiculous you dying bastard._ You couldn’t muster the strength to stake me right now even if I just sat here and let you do it. And I don’t need to turn you to save your pathetically fragile existence. But...” Alucard winced as if he were about to swallow a particularly bitter pill. Trevor braced himself. “...you will need to drink my blood.”

_Jesus Fucking Christ._

Trevor tried to recall everything he knew about vampire blood but he could barely remember his own name through the ever increasing _agony_ in his gut. All he could manage to sputter out was, “How is that...I don’t…no! Just... _no_!”

“I am not asking you to drink some common vampire’s blood you stupid fool. I’m offering you _my_ blood. It will heal you, I can promise you that, but then…”

The candlelight in the room seemed dimmer than it had before but his head hurt no less. “Then…?” The word came out as nothing but a breath.

“Sharing blood is not a thing to be taken lightly.”

“Sharing any old blood or sharing your _extra special_ Vampire Jesus blood?”

Faster than Trevor could counter, even at his best, Alucard’s hand shot out to pull him up by his tunic until they were face to face. Pain poured over him anew and he grit his teeth.

“Listen to me Belmont, and listen well: _You will die here._ You will die here, in Dracula’s fucking castle, atop the ruins of your dead family and the Belmonts will be no more. The darkness that exists in this world, that you and I are both all too familiar with, will then have finally succeeded in swallowing up your clan for good. No ignorant villagers with pitchforks and torches needed. Is that what you want? _Is it?_ I am _not_ offering to turn you. You will remain the same inebriated asshole you were when I spared your sad little life beneath Gresit because _I_ needed _your_ help then. The help of a _Belmont_. A birthright that you now seem willing to throw away over personal distaste and ancient prejudice. _Believe me when I say I share some of that sentiment._ What I am offering you could bind you to me in ways I am unable to predict. There is, however, no healing art or magic, black or otherwise, that I know of to cure this mess you’ve come to darken my doorstep with, _unsolicited I might add._ This is all I have to offer you _and I have never offered such a thing to anyone._ So you can either die here and throw away your life and your legacy or you can take the exceedingly generous offer of my blood. The choice is yours.”

Having finished thoroughly telling him off, Alucard released him. He fell back onto the bed with a soft thud and a whimper.

“Well, when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound as if I have much of a choice, now do I?”

“Necessity is often the enemy of choice. You either wish to live or you wish to die. Which is it? And understand that if we do this, there is no going back, for me as much as you. There is no exit once this threshold is crossed. But, as you said, we have little choice. And we have no time.”

“No choice, no time, no exit…” Trevor slurred his words as delirium overtook him. Even through the pain of dying it galled him that a _vampire_ was questioning his devotion to his calling. Was he really going to let the darkness snuff out the Belmonts? Was he going to succumb to some unknown assailant that might prove a larger threat than just to his life? As Alucard had once asked him, was he the last son of a warrior dynasty or just a lucky drunk?

He had to find out who did this to him. He had to _kill_ whoever did this to him. He was a Belmont. He had to live so he could fight on. No matter what.

“Fine,” Trevor said in a whisper, both resigned and determined, “I’ll do it.”


	2. Wolf's Clothes

When nothing happened after he finally agreed to - _God help him-_ drink Alucard’s blood, Trevor scavenged the last of his strength and sat up. He looked over at his - _God help him again-_ vampire savior.

“Well? Now what?” He demanded. And then he added a bit more tentatively, “How...uhm...how, exactly, do we uh... _do this_?”

Alucard’s face was expressionless. “How do you want to _do it_ , Belmont?”

“ _Oh for fucks sake!_ Don’t make it sound like _that_. I don’t want to _do it_ at all, but I don’t want to die, so just...tell me, or...something. Or maybe..."

Trevor stopped babbling when Alucard calmly opened his mouth and drew the pad of his thumb deeply across one of his fangs. A single line of bright crimson appeared on the fair skin.

_Shit. Is this happening? This is actually happening._

Trevor watched silent and transfixed as blood welled up and trickled down the other man’s finger. Alucard caught a stray drop of it on his own tongue before it threatened to stain his pristine white shirt. Slowly, he held out his hand and then, he waited.

The babbling started again before Trevor could stop himself. “Hold on a minute...I can’t just...this isn’t…”

Alucard interrupted his nonsense and, though his face was still deadpan, Trevor swore he heard a smirk in his voice. “Do you need some kind of foreplay first?”

There really was nothing for it at that point. This was the bottom. He’d finally hit it. The shithole world had finally succeeded in shitting on the last of his pride. So, without further preamble, _or foreplay_ , Trevor grabbed hold of Alucard’s wrist, and put the vampire’s bleeding finger in his mouth.

He almost retreated when the thick warmth of it hit his lips and tingled like tiny bolts of lightning on his tongue. Goosebumps prickled along his arms and the fine hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end. His muscles strained against their exhaustion and went stiff all over at that first faint taste of metal mixed with the subtle salt of skin. Every instinct that had ever kept him alive in the past shouted in his head all at once to _stop!_ _Stop! Fight back!_

But it was already done. And almost immediately he felt... _so much better._

One swallow was all it took for the screaming pain in his wound to finally quiet down. It was like the slick of ice on a sunburn, but ten times better. It was like a sip of water down a parched throat, but a hundred times better than that. It was like a breeze in the sweltering heat but a thousand times better still.

Those shouting instincts of his shut the fuck up pretty quickly after only seconds of succor and it was a good thing he’d given up on pride entirely because the sound of shameless relief he moaned around Alucard’s finger would have shriveled up the last of it anyway.

_But who needed pride? Certainly not Trevor Belmont. Pride never felt this fucking good._

His hand dropped from Alucard’s wrist and he leaned back against the pillows. Alucard moved with him to preserve their point of contact and Trevor closed his eyes. When he felt Alucard’s other hand come up to cradle his jaw, as if to help him continue to feed like a helpless babe, Trevor did nothing and let it happen.

“Take your time.” Alucard murmured patiently. “And take as much as you need.”

 _How much do I need?_ He thought, confused, but not concerned. _Should I know? I think I might need more..._

The fever in his head started to lessen and was replaced by a warmth in his chest that slowed his racing heart and eased his ragged breathing. He realized he was starting to feel dizzy. It wasn’t the sort of mortal wound dizziness he’d been living with until just a moment ago but a weightless sensation of floating. Alucard’s light touch at his jaw and the taste of him in his mouth felt like the only things tethering him to world. In point of fact, that was more than likely the case because when he started to actually _feel_ his lacerated skin magically stitch itself back together he realized exactly how close to dying he’d come.

“Your skin is mending. It may itch, but it won’t last long.” Alucard confirmed what he felt, but he didn’t bother to open his eyes to see it for himself. It was definitely itchy. Perhaps a bit uncomfortable as well but not unendurable. Once again, he realized just how far through death’s door he’d manage to venture when sucking on Alucard’s finger seemed like the best decision he’d made in ages.

They sat like that for a long time. Trevor taking. Alucard accommodating. When sleep rather than healing became the thing most pressing on his mind though, Trevor thought he’d probably had enough and took hold of Alucard’s wrist again, gently this time, to pull his hand away. Trevor opened his eyes briefly to see the cut on the other man’s thumb close all by itself. Alucard licked away the last bit of lingering blood from his finger before he stood. Every bone in Trevor’s body melted down into the bedding beneath him. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so _tired_. Or so damned comfortable _._ The pain from his wound had dissipated leaving an emptiness he wanted to surrender to but he wasn’t accustomed to resting somewhere without having to keep one eye open and one hand on a weapon. _Could he do that here?_

When Alucard spoke to him, he sounded far away. “Sleep now.” He said. And then farther, softer. “You’re safe here.”

There was a hiss as candles were snuffed. Then a crackle as hearth embers were poked. The door creaked open and by the time it clicked shut, Trevor finally, willingly, let himself drift off to sleep.

~

Adrian shut the door behind him and paused. He took a deep breath and took a moment to get his bearings. Upon his awakening, it seemed the castle had awoken also. The muted glow of candelabra illuminated the corridors casting shadows on the stones and tapestries. Pipes and gears were creaking with activity and the air within the vast space was warming all the way up to the vaults of the ceilings. A spider crawled from a crack in the floor beside his boot and scurried away back to its web. Perhaps a meal would be waiting for it there.

Staring blankly down at his thumb, no trace of blood left on it, Adrian wondered to himself,

_What just happened?_

He had seen and learned many things at his parents’ sides. Even at a young age, he had absorbed knowledge most humans could not fathom. The machinations of the mundane held no mystery for him. There was an order to the world. The study of science had afforded him an understanding of that order and with understanding came a certain comfortable predictability.

Trevor Belmont shunned order and predictability like Lucifer shunned the heavens.

The man was a single point of insidious entropy that threw everything into chaos. Adrian leaned back against the door and let his hands fall to his sides. He had to ask himself again,

_What the fuck just happened?_

That question, though, he realized, had a short bit of history to it, so he reviewed it in his head as he stood there. It started with the ill-fated day they met, when the last son of House Belmont had blindly destroyed most of his carefully crafted fortifications at Gresit, _and woke him up_ , because he ‘ _fell down a hole’_.

Following their mildly contentious introduction, Adrian then learned that same wayward son had been wandering the land mostly drunk and completely aimlessly, sleeping rough for years and yet, he was the inheritor of a massive hold full of enough knowledge, magic and material to rule a small country if he so desired. But he couldn’t access it because he didn’t know how to _open the fucking door._

Then they fought side by side and Adrian had to admit the demon hunter was gifted with sufficient strength, speed and witless nerve to battle whatever spawn hell could throw at him. And battle he did, without question or complaint, mostly at least, living through it all to see the sun rise on another day.

Depending on how one looked at it, the man had the devil’s own luck. Which brought them to the present moment when Belmont had, yet again, _woken him up_ with his unique brand of chaos and then had, somehow, driven Adrian to feed him his blood as a life saving measure.

_Why? What did it matter if a single insignificant human died?_

Death had been a constant companion in his life from his earliest memories. He neither feared it as humans did, nor celebrated it as some vampires did. His mother had taught him, as he watched her tend to the helpless, dying humans who came to her, that death was a thing to be respected and accepted with compassion. Away from the doting eyes of his mother, his father had taught him, with cold calculation, that death was a thing to be _mastered_. Vlad had shown his son many ways to bend death to his will and Adrian had learned well, but he had never been moved by any desire to exercise that mastery.

And yet, for reasons unknown to him, at the sight of Trevor Belmont’s petty life seeping away he was possessed of a primal urge to snatch him off the Styx and out of Hades’ grasp.

_But why?_

Adrian rubbed at his eyes. The last dregs of his long sleep still clung to him. He knew he’d been deep in the clutches of his dreams, but not one memory of them lingered. It made him feel restless. With Belmont and the bedlam that followed him now lying in his bed, however, he had no chance of reversing that feeling.

“Adrian...”

He turned and saw Sypha standing alone at the end of the hall. He stood up straight as she approached.

“Is Trevor…?”

“He is asleep. He will live.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “How did you do it?”

“That is for him to tell you if he chooses. It was his decision. And before you ask, he is still human. For as much as that’s worth.”

Sypha lightly touched his arm as she had before when he’d asked her to leave him alone with Belmont. She looked up at him with what appeared to be genuine gratitude. “Thank you. You’re a good friend, Adrian.”

“You are fortunate to have woken me. I’ve been asleep for some time.”

Sypha, ever helpful, oriented him as to exactly how much time had passed since he last saw them. “It will be a year by winter’s end. You’ve really been asleep for that long?”

“Mm.” Adrian nodded his confirmation but did not elaborate. “Have you and Belmont been traveling together since you left here?”

It was Sypha’s turn to be vague. “Not...really.”

Adrian didn’t delve further into that statement but after several minutes of staring at the floor, she explained without additional encouragement.

“We traveled together until we found my people and he stayed with us through the spring, but he was restless more often than not. By summer he started going off on his own. We would always let him know our plans so that he could join us again if he wanted to and sometimes he would but he would never stay for more than a few days.”

She looked past him at the door behind which Belmont slept. When she continued, Adrian wasn’t sure if she was still talking to him or if she was musing to herself.

“For as lonely as I thought he always seemed, I think he’s been on his own for too long to be comfortable around people.”

“Well, he is a Belmont. Perhaps he is simply more comfortable around monsters.”

Sypha laughed. He remembered that it used to surprise him how quick she was to smile and how easy it was for her to laugh. “That’s what he said.”

“He’s mostly feral himself as it is.” Adrian added and Sypha laughed again. It made him think that the last person to laugh so freely in this place was probably his mother.

Suddenly, he remembered his manners.

“You must forgive me for not asking sooner given the circumstances but, are you and your people in need of food or shelter? There is likely a storm coming and there is already a good deal of snow on the ground. It will be hard for you to travel.”

The rules of polite conduct drilled into him by his mother were rewarded by another friendly touch on his arm. “That’s very sweet of you, Adrian, but no, thank you, we’ll be fine. Most of our group is actually already settled into a camp near the last town we passed on the way here. It won’t take us long to get back to them. We’re planning on staying there for a while to offer assistance to the townspeople in whatever way we can, so we’ll be able to take Trevor along with us. He can decide what he wants to do with himself after that. I image it will involve hunting whatever did this to him. Thanks to you, now he’ll be able to do it.”

Reckless and inexplicable words left Adrian’s mouth before he was consciously aware he was saying them. “You should leave him here for now. He shouldn’t be moved yet. The flesh may be healed but it will take time for the curse, if it was one, to fully purge. And until we find out how this happened to him, it is not prudent to let him wander on his own.”

Sypha raised an eyebrow behind the fringe of her hair. “Until ‘ _we’_ find out what happened to him?”

Though he was unsure why exactly he’d just volunteered to play nursemaid to an overgrown infant, he was quick to justify it to Sypha. “It will no doubt be useful to search the Belmont hold for information. As you have obligations to your clan, _someone_ has to help the illiterate fool actually _read_ his family’s books and not just look at the pretty pictures of demons.”

Sypha’s smile widened and she folded her arms across her chest. She nodded at him, but she didn’t seem to be agreeing with his statement regarding Belmont’s illiteracy. The nodding seemed more self-congratulatory than anything.

“See. I knew you were a good friend, Adrian.”

It was then it finally struck him that she’d been addressing him by his given name. “Sypha, you are calling me Adrian. Why?”

Her smug grin mellowed and she bit her lower lip like she’d been caught scheming something. “I..um...well...you’ve been here by yourself all this time in this big creep-...uh, _drafty_ castle. I suppose I was hoping it would make you feel more...human.”

Adrian decided not to tell her she’d been appealing to the wrong half of him. It was Dracula’s blood that had just saved Belmont’s life. The human in him had nothing to do with it.

“Do you not want me to call you that anymore? Because…”

He waved away her offer. “No. It’s...fine. And speaking of which, may I ask a favor of you?”

Her eyes brightened. “Yes, anything!”

She was right about one thing. He’d been sequestered in this castle for far too long. The crushing weight of loss had pushed him to retreat into sleep and though he’d been roused by unexpected circumstances, he knew that was not the reason for his unease and restlessness of spirit. More sleep would solve nothing. It would be night for several hours yet and the skies above were clear. He needed to run. He wanted to feel the wind on his face and the snow beneath his feet. The moon was calling, large and bright.

There was also no denying that watching Belmont drink his fill had aroused within him an aching, urgent _hunger_.

“Please stay with Belmont until I return. When he wakes he will need to eat to regain his strength.”

Sypha agreed but looked confused. “Of course I’ll stay with him, but it’s the dead of night, where are you going?”

He was already walking away as he answered her. “I’m going hunting.”

~

Trevor dreamt he was running. Faster than he’d ever run before. Wind whipped past his ears and he inhaled clean cool air in great heaving breaths. He was racing through a quiet expanse of wood. Light from a full moon shone down through the pines and shimmered on the snow that he felt between his toes as he ran. If he’d been cold he might have wondered where his boots were but he wasn’t cold at all. He was pleasantly warm.

His heart pounded in his chest with each step like a drum beat, but despite his speed and exertion he wasn’t tiring out at all. _He felt exhilarated._ And he’d never felt so free. But not simply free, he felt _wild._

A leap over a fallen tree and he changed directions, throwing a spray of snow in his wake with the turn. He felt closer to something, on target somehow, like he was giving chase. He felt strong. Unbeatable. Invincible.

Something howled. Long and loud and triumphant. Every sound around him was loud. Even as he ran past he thought he could hear mice foraging. The wings of birds flapping. An icicle dripping.

And everything looked so _clear_. Where he should only see shadows he saw forms and details. Where the moonlight didn’t reach he saw the shapes and lines of the forest with no effort at all.

He leapt again and another howl echoed in the wood. The rumble of a growl, huffing, snarling. He closed his eyes to listen more intently. When he opened them a second later, he saw blood.

Rich, dramatic and red, it spattered all across the white snow. He looked down at himself, _what he thought was himself,_ and he saw white fur. There was blood spattered there too. It was warm and freshly spilt, with steam rising from it in the frigid winter air. The spatters were dynamic and quickly turned into streams coursing rivulets in the packed powder.

It flowed and flowed and he suddenly realized he could _taste_ it, thick and satisfying, in his mouth.


	3. Devil's Blade

Trevor’s first thought was:  _This is the worst hangover I’ve ever had._

If only that was the case. But, God had never felt the need to be so kind to him, what with the family excommunication and all, so why start now?

He woke to full consciousness with pinpricks of numbness in his limbs and an ache in his back like he’d passed out on a rock. It wasn’t a situation he was unfamiliar with. When he realized he _wasn’t_ outside on the ground, however, he started to wonder where the fuck he was.

Upon opening his eyes, they failed him initially and the world was nothing but a blurry mess of woody browns and stone greys with a splash of orange that looked like a fire. He started to worry. When he took a deep breath in through his nose and smelled _vampire_ , he started to panic. He bolted upright and reached for the Morning Star but, it wasn’t there.

_Fuck!_

He scrambled to search his clothes for his other weapons. He was wearing none...neither weapons, nor clothes. He stood, cursed, flailed, and then stumbled, not expecting to be... _on a bed?_ His bare feet hit a rug and his bare ass almost hit the floor but someone caught him.

“Careful, Belmont.”

With those words, from that _really irksome_ holier-than-thou voice, it all came back to him. A gash in his gut. Sypha scolding him. Speakers worrying over him. Knocking on the door of Dracula’s castle. And then drinking the blood of his dhampir son.

“Alu...Aluca…” He tried to say his benefactor’s name but that was as far as he got before his stomach did a queasy flip and he started vomiting. Alucard eased him down to his hands and knees so he could retch unrestricted but nothing came out. After a few minutes, when the urge to heave finally stopped, he sat back on the floor to catch his breath.

“Here, drink this. It will calm your stomach.”

Trevor took the cup that was handed to him. It held a weak tea that smelled faintly of ginger.

_At least it’s not blood._

He drank the whole thing and it did, indeed, settle the nausea that had come over him. As hangover cures went, it certainly ranked among the best he’d ever tried. Trevor wondered if it was possible to get a hangover from drinking blood or if he was still feeling out of sorts as a result of his cursed injury.

“Better?” Alucard took back the empty cup and hovered over him. Trevor nodded but he didn’t dare try to stand again.

“You moved too quickly.” Alucard admonished. He couldn’t say he appreciated everyone treating him like an unruly toddler, but he really wasn’t in a position to argue. “You’ve been in bed for two days. Your body was not prepared for the abrupt change to its equilibrium.” Trevor accepted Alucard’s hand in assistance and let himself be guided back to sit at the edge of the bed. “Had you not agitated yourself, I would have had you sit up for a time before you stood. The heart’s mechanisms must adjust the pumping of blood to the vital organs after long periods of inactivity.”

The only part of that Trevor understood was something about blood. Before he thought better of it, he ran his mouth off. Like usual. “Is everything always about blood to vampires?”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Alucard’s lips pursed into thin lines, taut with irritation.

“ _Nothing_ I just said to you had _anything_ at all to do with vampires. _You_ appear to be the one preoccupied with blood. Although perhaps it is appropriate given the loss of your virtue in that regard.” His pursed lips curled into an evil little smile. “I’m honored to have been your first, Belmont. And I can understand your desire for more of me.”

Well, he definitely deserved that. Being terrible at social interaction in normal situations was one thing, but he was only alive thanks to Alucard. Sypha always told him he needed to learn how to be nicer to people. Trevor wasn’t sure if whatever Alucard was could be considered ‘people’ but if he was going to start anywhere, it was here.

“Listen, Alucard, I’m sorry. Honestly. Sypha says I’m an asshole sometimes, but...well, look...uh, before we go any further, I need you to know that...that I’m grateful. So, you know, _thank you._ ”

Trevor was prepared to take whatever barb or insult came his way but, strangely, Alucard accepted his thanks without any sort of accompanying sarcasm. “You’re welcome, Belmont.” He said quietly.

They both paused to absorb the uncharacteristic exchange of civility between them. After a few moments of respectful silence, however, and with the formality of gratitude taken care of, Trevor needed to address the next most pressing issue.

“Why am I naked, by the way?”

Alucard’s gracious turn was apparently fully spent. “To put it bluntly, you reeked.”

Trevor lifted his arm to smell himself. He thought he smelled fine. “Oh come on. Don’t be so dramatic.”

Alucard glared down at him and pointed to his own nose. “My sense of smell is considerably more powerful than yours. In fact, my _everything_ is considerably more powerful than yours. So when I could no longer suffer your rancid stench, nor the filthy sight of you, I was forced to take action. Your clothes are right there.” He gestured to a large armchair in the corner where all of Trevor’s kit lay neatly folded. “And they are now _clean_. Your weapons are here as well in the chest at the foot of the bed. And may I commend you for being able to conceal _so many_ on your person at one time. Undressing you was a more precarious affair than I normally prefer when I’m ridding someone of their attire.”

Trevor just shrugged. “Yeah, well, needs must, I guess. Not all of us have fangs to rip out throats.”

Again, strangely, Alucard had no belittling comments to spar with, only one of his typical enigmatic expressions and an offer of assistance. “Do you need help dressing? You should be fine standing and walking now. I can leave, to give you privacy.”

Trevor laughed at that. “Why? Nothing here you haven’t seen before I’m guessing. And I am pretty impressive to look at so _I can understand your desire for more of me_.”

Rather than the indignant scoff Trevor was expecting as a result of throwing his own words back at him, Alucard laughed as well. “Are you quite sure you feel alright, Belmont? It sounds as if you may still be suffering from delusions.”

Trevor walked over to collect his clothes and as he put on his trousers he looked down to inspect his abdomen. There was a faint pink line where his wound had been. It certainly wasn’t the worst scar he had. Frankly, he was impressed at how nicely and how quickly Alucard’s blood had healed him. He really owed the man another thank you.

“That scar may remain.” Alucard noticed him studying it. “It was a bad injury and you came to me quite late.”

“Eh, doesn’t bother me.”

Alucard frowned at that for some reason. “I suppose that’s to be expected. You have many scars.”

The other man’s eyes followed Trevor’s movements as he dressed. Being watched so intently didn’t exactly make him feel uncomfortable but it made him feel...something. _Vulnerable?_ No. Vulnerable couldn’t begin to describe how helpless he’d been at Alucard’s mercy across two days of unconsciousness so there was no reason to feel vulnerable now that he was awake and alert. Not to mention, he was no shrinking violet and modesty over being naked was definitely not a thing he would feel in the first place. There was something about Alucard mentioning his scars though, something in the way he said it, part clinical fascination, part wonder, part pity. Trevor could do without the pity.

“What with magical healing blood, I guess you don’t have many scars yourself.” He bit his tongue too late. “Uh, well...except for the one...”

Alucard brought a hand up to his chest. “Mm.” He nodded slowly, then looked away as Trevor finished dressing.

_When did this turn into a pity party?_

Alucard left the room at that point, despite Trevor’s assertion he didn’t mind an audience. By the time he’d laced his boots and retrieved his weapons, taking time to conceal them all on his person again, Alucard returned. He carried a large steaming bowl and a spoon which he set down at a table by the fire.

“You should eat something. Here.”

Trevor sat at the table and took a whiff of the contents in the bowl. It was a hearty looking stew and it smelled _fantastic_. Without thinking twice he grabbed up the spoon and took a bite. Once again: _not blood,_ so whatever it was would be perfectly fine to eat. Better than fine, actually. It tasted as delicious as it smelled even with his very un-powerful human senses.

“ _Oh my god,_ this is good. Is this venison? Where did you get it?”

“It is and that is a stupid question. Did you not grow up here? You should know the forest is well stocked with deer. I went hunting. It was a simple task.”

Trevor froze and dropped his spoon.

_Hunting? In the forest?_

He’d had a dream. He suddenly, _vividly,_ remembered that he’d had a dream. How could he forget it? It was the most detailed, most lucid dream he’d ever had. Almost as if it was real...

“Wait. When you say ‘hunt’, what do you mean?”

Remembering the dream stoked another memory. Even delirious, Trevor remembered that before he drank Alucard’s blood he’d been warned that doing so would bind them somehow. That hadn’t exactly sounded like a good thing at the time but, when one is dying, details like that tend to get overlooked. There was no overlooking it now.

“Well?” He asked again doggedly. “What do you mean you ‘went hunting’?”

“I fear your mind is still addled, Belmont. What is unclear about it? I tracked the creature and killed it. The end.”

“Yes, yes, but _how?”_ Trevor demanded impatiently. “With a bow and arrow? Your weird floating sword? A pointy stick?”

Alucard, also growing impatient, hissed and bared his fangs. _“What do you think I killed it with?”_

“Yes that’s my fucking point! But were you, you know, _you_ or were you something _else_ at the time?”

Alucard paused to consider the question, then he replied. “If you must know, I took the form of a wolf. You have seen me transform before.”

Trevor closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead as if it would rub away this new realization.

“Yeah. I have. And I saw you this time too.”

He hadn’t just seen him. He saw what Alucard saw in his white wolf form. He’d moved with him, experienced the hunt and the kill with him, and he tasted the blood along with him as he tore into the thing’s flesh.

“Shit. _Shit_. _I fucking saw it all.”_

~

Adrian took care to guard his reaction. He did not comment right away. He sat down across from Belmont as the other man rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his faintly trembling hands.

 _Does he think he can rub away what he saw?_ _I warned him._

But this was happening much sooner than Adrian had anticipated. Much sooner than he would have liked. If Belmont had lived the hunt with him in some sort of dream so soon after drinking his blood then the seed of a bond between them had started to grow even before…

Adrian took a breath and accepted what he must do next.

_I’ll have to tell him._

He’d hoped...well, he wasn’t sure what he’d hoped. To ignore it? To spare the man? To spare them both from having to deal with these invasions into their solitary lives?

He waited until Belmont lifted his head. He stared back at him with an intensity behind his blue eyes that Adrian wasn’t sure he’d seen outside of a fight. He did not want this to go badly. It would only make things worse. Belmont blinked bringing attention to the scar across his left brow and cheek.

_So many scars…_

“I imagine you would like an explanation for this.” Adrian started. “I can tell you what I know and what I can guess at, but there is much that I do not understand myself.”

Belmont did not break his gaze. “Spill it Alucard. And I do not mean your blood.”

“It appears as though you were _with me_ as I hunted. The experience presented itself to you as a dream, which is not unexpected. Those who have shared blood can commonly share experience by way of dreams. I will be honest with you in that I was not aware at the time that you were dreaming of me.”

Adrian paused to gauge Belmont’s reaction. It wasn’t what he expected it to be. Slowly, the man’s intense stare cracked. His eyes softened and the lines across his forehead and along his mouth smoothed. He started chuckling, low at first and then louder.

“Of course.” He said as his laughing continued. “Of fucking course! Why not? I traded death from a cursed wound for the curse of dreaming about _you_ for the rest of my life, ahahahahahaha!”

Adrian waited while Belmont got over his outburst. At least it was looking less and less like their discussion was going to come to blows. There was no telling how that would turn out if it happened, given their new attachment.

Eventually, Belmont stopped his ridiculous giggling, wiped giddy tears from his eyes and picked up the spoon again to continue eating. Adrian was glad he was taking things in stride, but, unfortunately, there was more he would need to hear and eventually accept. There was more both of them would need to accept moving forward but there was potential to put their situation to good use.

As he stuffed his face, Belmont asked him casually, “Aren’t you going to eat?”

Adrian couldn’t help but chuckle himself at that question. The man simply begged for these exchanges. It was really quite amazing. He wasn’t sure if Belmont was fishing for a row or if he was actually too stupid to realize what came out of his mouth. “I’ve eaten.” Adrian said, intentionally vague and blatantly suggestive. “Thank you.”

Belmont sputtered and choked on the bite of food in his mouth and reached up to check his neck.

Adrian smiled. Perhaps the man was predictable to some degree at least. “Now, now, that is not what I was implying. I did not feed from _you_. I drank the deer at the time of the kill. You should know. _You were there_. It was sufficient to sate my hunger.”

Belmont resumed eating, crudely talking with his mouth full. “You drank _‘the deer’?_ The _whole_ damn deer? That’s...a lot of blood.”

“I was asleep for months and I made no provisions for blood here while I slept as I had in my keep at Gresit.”

“Well, thanks for that too then. For saving my life and for not eating me.”

Adrian shook his head. _Does he really think I would have bitten him in his sleep?_

“Understand this Belmont: I have never and will never ‘eat’ someone, as you so inelegantly put it, without permission. Many of my kind may disagree but _consent_ in such matters is important and necessary. My mother did not raise a beast.”

“Says the fucking _wolf_.” Belmont raised his scarred eyebrow at him. “And by the way, I didn’t exactly consent to having my clothes and weapons removed, now did I?”

_Fuck. He’s right._

In his defense, Adrian had, in fact, considered it a serious problem that he’d had to get Belmont undressed without his consent, but in addition to his large wound, the man was covered with minor cuts and scrapes that he’d been worried would get infected in the terribly unsanitary state he was in. He’d done his best to limit the contact to medical necessity only, but there was only so much he could avoid.

Which brought him to the important information that needed to be shared.

“You are correct Belmont, and I offer my sincere apologies for needing to undress you, however, aside from my aversion to your smell, I was concerned that leaving you so filthy would breed infection. After having already taken drastic measures to save your life, I could hardly throw it away over something that was easily remedied.”

Adrian took a deep breath before he continued.

“I must admit, however, that it led me to discovering another aspect of our new bond, in addition to your dreams.”

Belmont sighed heavily, finished the last of his food then pushed away from the table to lean back in his chair. “Alright. Fine. Out with it.”

_It was the damn scars that did it. So many of them._

Adrian closed his eyes and flexed his left fist, open and closed, open and closed, then he rubbed his fingers together. He could still feel it.

Unavoidably, as he’d already admitted, while Belmont slept, Adrian undressed him. And with each layer of clothing he removed a new scar was revealed. Small ones, large ones, fine lines and jagged indentations. With the first accidental ghosting of his fingers over one of them, Adrian was struck by a vision.

Scars were peculiar things. For humans, they were things that were filled with pain and emotion. They were tangible marks of damaging events that often left the victim with marks on their psyche as well. Adrian knew as much to be true from his own scar. As Belmont had alluded, the only one he’d ever suffered was at the hands of his father. The physical pain of it was not something he would ever choose to relive. The emotional pain of it was something he wasn’t sure he was past living with yet.

After one sudden and inadvertent touch, that lasted only a fraction of a second, one of Belmont’s scars spoke to him as loudly and as painfully as his own. It was an old and faded pale patch of skin, barely noticeable on the man’s sword hand. It had taken him a moment to absorb what flashed in his mind’s eye at that single innocent passing glance.

He saw the snap of a whip, and then he felt it. _In his own hand he felt it._ A sting, a hitch of breath, and blood. Tears then. Childish, immature, wailing tears. Belmont was young when he got that scar, not more than an untested boy, perhaps only just starting to learn swordplay and only just learning the lesson of how _not_ to hold your weapon lest it get taken from you by a cruel teacher’s whip.

Adrian shook the sensation off his hand and opened his eyes to look into Belmont’s.

“You have a very old scar on your left hand. You were a young boy when it happened, holding a sword and sparring with someone who was wielding a whip, as you do now. You were disarmed by that whip and you have a scar to show for it.”

Belmont frowned and clenched his left fist. “I...how did you…”

“I accidentally touched it. When I did, I saw a vision of how you got it. Much like your dream of me, however, it was not simply a vision. _I felt it._ The perception was brief but undeniable.”

They no longer met each other’s gaze, both looking down at their hands. Belmont asked exactly the question he should though it sounded as if he didn’t want to ask it. “Did you touch any more of them?”

Adrian was quick to answer. “No. I did not. But…”

Belmont followed his train of thought. “..but you could. Maybe. And maybe you could see how I got this one.” He touched his stomach.

Adrian nodded. “Sypha departed with her people and left you in my care shortly after I returned from hunting. While I waited for you to wake up, I searched several relevant shelves both here among my father’s collections and also in your library. I was unable to turn up anything that would give a clue as to what caused your injury or the source of the attack. We have virtually nothing to go on, making a starting point of investigation difficult.”

 _“Your library.”_ Belmont said, seemingly commenting on something else entirely.

“What?”

“It’s _your_ library. I gave it to you. Remember?”

“I...uhm...yes. Of course.”

“So you want to give me a tummy rub and see if you can find out what happened from my scar?”

Adrian clenched his jaw. _Why is every interaction so difficult?_

“You are not a _dog_ , Belmont, even though you act like an animal, so no, I will not be petting you for pleasure. Yours or mine. But I would like to ask for your permission to touch your scar and see if it has anything to say.”

Though Adrian wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear it.

~

Trevor never thought, in his wildest nightmares, that he would be volunteering twice in as many days to have a vampire invade his personal space. Without staking it, that is. But he knew very well there was probably no other way to learn anything about his attack. It was a stroke of dubious luck that he was even afforded this opportunity. And he had to admit, Alucard had been something resembling respectful, so that lessened the sheer fucking infuriating irony that he was living.

It was possible that no Belmont ever, in the history of his very old and very distinguished house, had had such interactions with a creature of the night.

_But since he’s able to walk around in the daytime too, does that make it better?_

Trevor stood and lifted his tunic to expose his abdomen. He looked down at Alucard who just sat there, staring at him. “What are you waiting for? Touch the damn scar already so I know who I need to kill.”

“I can make no promises, Belmont. Nothing at all may happen. Or I may learn more about you than I care to know.”

“I’m really not all that interesting compared to the whole broody vampire prince thing you’ve got going, trust me, so let’s just do this.”

Though he’d given his consent freely, he still held his breath as Alucard stood and slowly came towards him. It always seemed like the man was levitating somehow, even when his feet were touching the ground, like he was gliding instead of walking. It made Trevor feel lumbering and clumsy in comparison. He recalled his dream and how, as a wolf, he practically danced across the snow. Alucard reached out one hand when they were face to face. His movements flowed like liquid but when his touch landed it felt like nothing more than air, a whisper of something almost imperceptible against his skin.

Alucard stayed like that for a moment, no contact between them but the barest glancing of fingertips and he watched Trevor watch him. When Trevor finally let the muscles of his abdomen relax and finally let out the breath he’d been holding, Alucard advanced. He slid the length of his fingers across Trevor’s stomach to splay over the new scar. He hung his head as if deeply concentrating and he closed his eyes.

Trevor breathed in and out calmly, inhaling Alucard’s unique scent, waiting. Sypha had once said that Alucard seemed cold. Like a bottomless void of cold or some nonsense like that. Maybe it was the blood still talking but he actually felt quite the opposite. They were so close Trevor could feel the heat of the man’s body. Though the touch of his fingers was soothingly cool, there was a radiant warmth to him, so unlike what Trevor had come to expect from vampires.

_Half vampire. Remember? He’s half human too. You keep forgetting._

They stayed motionless together like that for so long, Trevor almost forgot what they were doing. When Alucard finally raised his head he was practically scowling. He removed his hand and made a noise like a low growl. Again, Trevor was reminded of his dream.

“Well, what is it?” Trevor asked as he lowered his tunic, searching the other man’s eyes. Too bad their bond didn’t extend as far as mind reading.

_Holy shit, did I really just think that?_

Alucard spoke before Trevor could explain away his stray thoughts. “All I was able to see was a weapon...” he said, then he added, the wolf’s growl evident in his voice again, “but it is enough. Follow me.”

He gave Trevor no further explanation and immediately turned on his heels and walked out of the room. Trevor, having no other options, followed as he was bid. He had to hurry to keep up with Alucard’s swift, long strides. They wandered a serpentine path through the castle and Trevor found himself gawking like a provincial at the things and spaces they passed.

Alucard led him down broad corridors and through huge arcades. There were rooms full of intricate machinery that Trevor wouldn’t be able to describe even if he tried, and other rooms full of all the tedious trappings that might be found in any normal well-appointed parlor. The place was vast. Trevor knew of whole towns that were smaller than the main keep let alone all the accompanying towers, spires, minarets and pallasades.

And there were stairs. _Endless. Fucking. Stairs._

At the midpoint of one of the endless fucking staircases, Trevor stopped to catch his breath. “Fucking hell, Alucard. How much farther is it? Where the fuck are we even going?”

Alucard stopped and turned his head to look back at him. “Not much farther but this is a large castle. Do you need me to carry you?”

Trevor couldn’t tell if he was being serious or if he was being insulting. He opted to go with insulting. “No! I definitely do not need you to carry me.” And then he mumbled under his breath. “Asshole.”

Alucard faced forward again and kept walking. “Please, Belmont. I carried you in here myself after you passed out at my front door, so spare me any outrage over your absurd human constructs regarding masculinity.”

Trevor dismissed the slight. “It has nothing to do with that. I could care less about another man carrying me. I just don’t like the idea of _you_ carrying me.”

“Well, either it was I who carried you or you stayed outside in the snow. No one else could lift you. You are a very large human.”

Trevor laughed gloatingly. “Ha! I knew you looked.” And then he finally won that indignant scoff he’d been waiting for.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Belmont. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I am taller than you. Make no mistake, my size superiority extends in all directions. Now, here we are.”

They exited a dark hallway into a large chamber bare of the comfortable furnishings of the residence somewhere above or below or behind them. Trevor had long since given up on keeping track of direction.

Alucard stepped aside to let Trevor roam and look around. There were large, worn stone tables. Chains and cages lined the walls and were stacked in the corners. Dry, crumbling bones littered the floor and the unmistakable stench of old blood hung oppressively in the air. There were tools too, hammers and tongs and pokers. Some hanging from the ceiling high above, some left randomly where their owner had discarded them.

Alucard picked up one of the tools. It was a wicked looking knife, curved and notched, with an intricate grip. He held it out to Trevor. “Do you know what this is, Belmont?”

“Uh...a knife?”

“This is not a common knife. It was a weapon like this that caused your injury. And I will tell you that nothing on this earth but my blood would have saved you from the wound it dealt you, so you were fortunate indeed that Sypha brought you here.”

Trevor passingly, unconsciously, wished he was still standing close enough to Alucard to feel his body heat, because he’d suddenly become quite cold in what was obviously a well-used death chamber. “Alright then. So what is the damned thing?”

Alucard curled his lip up in disgust. “It is the blade of a devil forgemaster.”


	4. Mirror's Reflection

Adrian lied. He wasn’t proud of it, but it was necessary. For his sanity if nothing else.

It was true what he’d told Belmont, that all he _saw_ when he touched his scar was a forgemaster’s blade. But what he’d _felt_...it was another matter entirely. It was a lie by omission not telling him everything he’d experienced from their contact, but it was a lie nonetheless and it made him feel uncomfortable.

Belmont said nothing as he took the knife from him and studied it. He turned it over in his hands, then wrapped his fingers around the grip to take a few swings at phantom enemies. As Adrian watched him stab at shadows he struggled with the shadows in his own head put there by the man in front of him.

He had felt pain from the scar, which he expected. What surprised him though, was the magnitude of that pain. Having watched the brave fool suffer was nothing compared to _feeling_ the blinding torture of it first hand. He didn’t know how Belmont had survived long enough to seek help, but not only that, he’d been able to maintain something of himself through the pain. There was a vein of stubborn strength running through the man that was apparently too insolent to yield.

Swallowing down the physical aspect of the touch was difficult, but not complicated. Alongside Belmont’s physical suffering, however, came an emotional suffering that was _very_ complicated, and Adrian was very unprepared for it.

In what he thought were his dying moments, Trevor Belmont had felt alone. Terribly, hopelessly alone.

The desolation of it ripped through Adrian’s heart, stealing his breath away and arresting his senses. He wanted to break free, to pull away but he was paralyzed, trapped inside that touch and that pain. The longer he stood there, enduring Belmont’s cold, brittle, loneliness, the stronger the bond linking them seemed to get and the line between them blurred. Adrian could no longer discern which feelings belonged to Belmont, which were simply his reaction to those feelings and which were completely his own.

And that wasn’t even the extent of it. Woven together with the overwhelming desolation was a desperate longing. It was an indistinct, shapeless desire, but that did not lessen its intensity. There was some nameless thing that Belmont wanted more than anything, something he saw slipping away as his life slipped away. Adrian had no idea what it was because Belmont had no idea what it was, yet he longed for it anyway and the absence of it in his life, when he thought death was imminent, was made even more tragic by the fact that he had lived his whole life with no idea how to get it. Worse yet, he thought that perhaps he never deserved whatever it was in the first place.

It was _gutting_. Gutting to stare down such an end. Gutting to come face to face with the raw reality of the human condition.

Even with his mother’s teaching, even in the wake of her death, Adrian had to admit to himself that any understanding of mortality and its repercussions was but an obligation for him. His vampire half loomed larger, his father’s voice in his head was much louder, reminding him that he would never suffer the finality that _they_ did. _They_. Those fragile animals with their fragile existence full of fleeting joys and fleeting pain because everything in their short lives was fleeting. Adrian, like his father before him, knew only how to stare forward into a limitless expanse of time.

Feeling Belmont’s moment of mortality, truly _feeling_ it, without the safety of intellectualizing it away or dismissing it as something he would never suffer himself was wholly unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He wondered how Belmont functioned with the weight of such emotion and still had energy to spend on crass jokes. He wondered how Belmont even came to possess such emotion when at first glance he seemed to have no more depth to him than the reflections in a mirror.

Fitting, Adrian thought, to liken the man to a mirror. He wished he’d never looked into the Trevor Belmont mirror in the first place. It would have been easier. But now he had, and he felt mired down by the private, personal reflections of the man that he could not un-see. There was little in the world Adrian Tepes need fear but there was something about this he feared. Whether for himself or for Belmont, he couldn’t say for certain.

When Belmont was finished with his inspection of the knife he tossed it irreverently down onto one of the stone tables.

“That’s a shit weapon.” He said as he rested his hands on his own weapons at his hips. “It’s balance is all wrong and it’s too heavy to be quick with.”

“It isn’t meant to be used in a fight.” Adrian clarified while doing his best to maintain whatever this was that passed for a normal rapport between them despite his new knowledge of Belmont’s inner workings. “It is meant to reanimate the dead or inflict a wound with the intent to turn a living being into an undead automaton. To those ends, it is only useful in the hands of individuals with particular skills.”

“Like your father’s forgemasters.”

“Yes.”

Belmont drummed his fingers impatiently on the hilts of his weapons. “So, any idea who it was? And where I can find them? And kill them?”

“My father had two human generals who tended his forges. I do not know what became of them. They were not among the vampire generals we killed.” Adrian picked the knife up from the table. “Using this, it might be possible to find out why they did not die alongside their master and where they might be.”

“Wait. He had _human_ generals? Why the fuck would two humans help him wipe out their own people?”

Adrian paused, confused. _Does he really need this explained to him?_

“Belmont, your family was persecuted by the church and scorned by the citizens you once served. How is it possible that you, of all people, cannot imagine a scenario where someone has been so victimized by human ugliness that they choose to rebel? I would guess that if they signed on to execute an order for the extinction of humankind then they obviously had their own vendettas against the species. And now it appears one or both of them has a personal vendetta against you.”

Belmont had turned away from him at the reference to his family and was silent. Adrian could not see his face to read whatever emotions lay therein and he dared not touch the man again. There was a subtle change in his voice though when he finally responded. It was deeper, rougher.

“Why me? Just because I helped ruin their plans for death and destruction? Do you think Sypha is in danger too?”

“Sypha is not such easy prey. Her magic is formidable. A wise person would not engage with her, especially while she surrounds herself with other speakers. There would be no way of knowing who or how many among them were magicians. It is unfortunate you did not travel with them more consistently. It might have afforded you some protection.”

He turned back around with narrowed eyes and accusations. “Are you saying I’m easy prey in need of protecting? I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself.”

Adrian knew he should stop. There was no reason to swat at each other so pointlessly but, for some unknown reason, he kept it up. “Oh? Is that how we came to be standing here together having this pleasant conversation?”

Belmont set his jaw and clenched his teeth. A blood vessel in his neck pulsed obscenely, its rhythmic motion quickening with his rising irritation. The ripple of blood flowing beneath the skin there caught Adrian’s eye and his gaze fixated. He couldn’t look away, try as he might.

“I’ve managed to stay alive on my own for a long time.” He said and something in Adrian’s chest tightened at that terse statement but he shook it off, forced his eyes away from Belmont’s neck and quipped back.

“Likely because your god looks after infants, drunkards and fools. You qualify as all three so clearly divine intervention has been on your side.”

A snarl of a curse was all he got next. _“Fuck you.”_

Adrian didn’t think, he just spoke. “Are you asking, Belmont?” He said, venom dripping from the words.

“Are you fishing for a fuck, Alucard?” Belmont answered his poison with poison.

_Why do I let him lead me into these pissing contests?_

At his self-admonition, Adrian was finally successful in biting his tongue and he got back to the matter at hand.

 _“As I was saying,_ I might be able to divine something about the location of the forgemaster who used this blade.” He sheathed the knife in his belt.

Belmont laughed and spoke with a sneer. “Oh really? Do I need to go and get a chicken to sacrifice so you can study the entrails?”

_This puerile little brat. He doesn’t remember getting stabbed in the gut by a demon blade but he remembers every single damn off-hand slight ever spoken to him._

Adrian closed his eyes and forced his voice into a measured calm. “No, Belmont. Thank you. I will, however, need some of my father’s old things.” He nearly choked on his next offer. “Would you care to accompany me?”

“No.” Belmont said matter-of-factly. “But we both know I’m going to anyway, so lead on.”

Adrian was never more happy to walk away from an exchange. They went in silence up to his father’s study. He had put to rights all of the destruction from almost a year ago, so the place was more or less tidy. Except for the shards of a broken mirror scattered across the floor.

Belmont tiptoed around them. “Is this one of those mirrors like my family had in the hold?”

“It is, though this one was fully functional at one time.” It seemed they were back to being civil. “I hope we can still use it.”

Adrian closed his eyes and focused. He raised his hand and silently summoned the shards to submit to his control. He felt them tremor, felt the weight of them and the form of them and then he _had_ them. It took only a wave and a thought to assemble them into a unified reflective surface, suspended in the air.

“Now there’s an impressive trick.” Trevor mumbled.

While maintaining his posture, Adrian made a request. “Will you please hand me the book on the second shelf to your left with the red runes carved into the spine?”

“Uh...hold on…” Belmont searched out the book and plucked it from the shelf. “Okay yeah, here…” He paused before he handed it over. _“Holy shit._ Is this...is this bound in _human skin?”_

Adrian took the book from him. “Yes. I believe it is.” He focused his mind again, this time on the book, and bid it hover in the air between him and the mirror.

Belmont wasn’t done voicing his disgust. “So your father’s ‘old things’ are a book bound in human skin and the floating shards of a dark magic mirror?” He added under his breath, _“How in the fucking world did your human mum ever love him?”_

Adrian let the book and the mirror fall to the floor. He rounded on Belmont and out of pure spite, he added, “The pages are inked in blood, if that makes it better.”

Nothing good would come from continuing this topic of conversation. Yet he continued it. “Whether you are squeamish about it or not, my father _did_ possess books bound in skin and written with blood. And whether you care to believe it or not, my mother _did_ still love him.”

Adrian stared down at the book. In his mind’s eye flashed the sight of rows of vampire skulls lining shelves in the Belmont hold, displayed as morbid trophies. How had anyone ever loved the Belmonts who hunted and killed those poor creatures? Was that any worse than this? Adrian picked up the book and said quietly, “It is possible to love a person and not the things they’ve done.”

Belmont was not convinced. “Yeah, well, maybe she just loved the look of him. Power is always attractive to some people I suppose, no matter what kind of power it is.”

Adrian should have been more angry at the disparaging remarks against his parents, but he was getting tired of this relentless back-and-forth. There were no winners in this game. Quietly again, he replied. “If all you can love is the flesh of someone then you have no idea what love is. Not that I expect you would.”

Adrian left no room for a rebuttal. He waved the mirror and the book back into their positions, then he took the knife from his belt and nicked his finger with the tip. A single drop of blood escaped and floated in the air along with the book and the mirror. The book opened of its own accord, pages fluttering quickly to the right place. When the turning pages stopped, the drop of blood moved to soak into the sheets. With a wavering glow, images started to form in the mirror.

“What the hell…?” Belmont warily moved closer to observe.

There was a flash of a desert sandscape. Nothing but dunes and punishing sun. After that, came an image of the castle they were standing in, dark against a red sky. As quickly as that image appeared, it disappeared to reveal a frozen mountainside with an old fortress jutting out from its snow capped peak.  And then the book fell, and the mirror went dark.

Adrian let the shards disassemble and lowered them carefully down to a pile on the floor. He should have assumed the whole endeavor would yield only more questions. He was not his father, with unlimited command over such arts. He was only Adrian, limited by the humanity in him that he struggled to understand.

“I am sorry, Belmont. Those images were too vague. The mirror showed us places connected to the person who has used this knife but they could have been where our suspect is, has been in the past, or where they will be in the future. And I did not recognize that mountain castle or the desert. I’d hoped I might have…”

Belmont stopped him before he could continue. “Don’t worry about it. Not sure I could’ve lived down getting help from... _those things_ anyway. At least not the in same week I had to drink blood and share a wolf body with you. Maybe next week I’ll be ready for more occult shit. Or maybe not. Depends.”

Adrian shook his head in resignation and laughed in spite of himself. “Depends on what?”

“How drunk you get me. Surely this place has a wine cellar? All good castles have a death room _and_ a wine cellar. Plus, it’s the perfect cure for dead ends and disappointments. Trust me. I know.”

Adrian ignored another sudden tight feeling in his chest. “You should really be eating another meal of actual food, not filling your stomach with drink.”

“Why not both? Have you got anymore of what I ate earlier? Best meal I’ve had in ages.”

“Yes, of course. If we go down to the kitchen, the wine cellar is right there as well. I suppose you’ve earned it.”

~

It seemed all Trevor had earned was more fucking stairs.

At least they were going down this time. And at least he was promised they would lead to food and drink. He followed along with Alucard again as if the two of them were chained together like a procession of the damned. If he was in hell though, he supposed it wasn’t so bad.

He might have suffered to get here but, so far, he’d slept the most peaceful sleep he’d had since... _forever, probably?_ He’d eaten as good as he had in... _almost as long?_ The food. Not the blood. And he got to poke at the prickly asshole in front of him quite a bit which was as much entertainment as he’d had since... _since the last time they were together._

And all of that without killing anything.

They walked and walked, down and down. Trevor purposely didn’t pay any mind to anything along the way this time, having had more than enough of the curiosities to be found in Dracula’s keep. He decided to shut the fuck up for a while and count his blessings, because prickly asshole Alucard seemed more prickly than usual since their little touching session. It made Trevor wonder if there was something he was keeping from him. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case but he wasn’t concerned enough to try to force the issue. Yet. He also wasn’t sure he wanted to know whatever it was anyway.

Having a dream about a wolf was one thing. It hadn’t been unpleasant and, as far as bizzare shit went, it ranked low on the scale. In fact, it was a nice dream. He couldn’t remember when he’d felt so good, dream or not. No aches, no pains, and no complications. Just fresh air and freedom and not a care in the world. Being alive, well-rested, well-fed, and having pleasant dreams...those were the blessings he counted.

Alucard learning things about him from his scars was not part of that list.

He hadn’t thought about his father teaching him how to hold a sword _-by showing him the wrong end of a whip-_ in a very long time. And he liked it that way. He had more than a few scars he’d rather not re-live even if it was only through Alucard’s eyes. He would’ve never let Alucard touch the new one if there wasn’t a point to it. As it was, after their failure with the mirror and that fucked-up, blood-magic, human-skin book, there might not have been a point to it after all.

And there was still the nagging thought that Alucard wasn’t telling him something.

“The wine cellar is there, Belmont.” Alucard stopped them at an intersection and he pointed to an archway on the right. “The kitchen is there.” He pointed to a door on the left. “I’ll get your food. Choose whatever you’d like from the collection.”

“I’m not going to find any vintage bottles of blood in there or anything, am I? Or demon piss? Ogre bile? Consecrated virgin tears? Anything like that? Or just normal wine?”

Alucard rolled his eyes and sighed. Trevor smiled. So much for shutting the fuck up, but it was a legitimate question. Especially after the cheeky fucker casually had him fetch a book covered in human skin without so much as an _‘oh by the way...’_

“You will find nothing of the sort in there.” Alucard answered flatly. “Those things are in a different cellar.”

Trevor kept smiling as Alucard walked away to the kitchen. Sometimes it was fun to get as good as you gave. It made him feel like less of an irredeemable asshole when he was with an even bigger irredeemable asshole.

He hummed a little tune as he strolled over to the wine cellar. When he got there, he wanted to sing outright at the heavenly sight that met him.

There were rows upon rows and nooks upon nooks of bottles. Hundreds and hundreds of undisturbed, dust covered bottles. _For free._ He nearly passed out from joy. When his giddy hyperventilation died down he started filling his arms. It almost made it worth drinking Alucard’s blood. Being alive was good and all, but being alive _and_ having so much wine to drink was _fucking nirvana._

With an idiot grin and his arms full, he went over to the kitchen to find Alucard sitting at a large oak table, gazing pensively into a giant, homey hearth. There was a place set across from him with a bowl of food, a spoon and a goblet.

Alucard looked up. “While I’m sure you would be perfectly happy drinking from the bottles, I set out a cup for you.”

Trevor set down his many bottles and looked around. The kitchen was as welcoming and normal as any kitchen had a right to be, let alone a vampire’s kitchen.

“Do you know how fucking weird it is that you have the most normal kitchen I’ve ever seen and also have a room for necromancy?”

Alucard looked back into the fire. “You are blazing new trails of naivete this evening, Belmont, if you think this is the only fortress with the commonplace and the gruesome under one roof. There are countless human castles where warlords have both raised their children and tortured their enemies. My father was no different. _Nor was yours,_ I might add. Or have you forgotten the trophy skeletons of the faithless departed in the hold below us?”

Trevor sat, poured himself a glass of free wine and tucked into his food. Mouth full, he finally called Alucard out. “Is that what has your knickers in a twist? That I’m pointing out your family’s barbarism and you think mine was the same?”

Alucard didn’t answer him. He just sat there and tapped one finger on the table. It was slow and soft, but it was repetitive and it didn’t seem like he was aware he was doing it. It was as clear a tell as ever there was.

Trevor gave him a few more minutes to answer of his own accord while he finished his glass of wine and poured himself another. When he still didn’t answer, Trevor pushed.

“Alright, Alucard. I gave you a chance, now I’m done. You’ve been acting cranky and saying weird shit since you touched my scar. Weird and cranky shit, even for you. If there’s something you’re fucking hiding from me…”

Alucard interrupted him by pounding his hand on the table. “If there is something I’m _fucking_ hiding from you, Belmont, perhaps you’d do better to thank me for doing so rather than probing into things you may not really want an answer to.” Alucard turned to him and glared. “You already know I can feel pain from your scars. Would you like me to recount your dying moments for you as I saw them when I touched you? _As I felt them?_ I would think experiencing them once would be enough.” Alucard sat back in his chair again and looked away. He mumbled, more to himself than to Trevor, “It was certainly enough for me.”

Trevor wanted to answer back, but Alucard was right. He’d thought the same thing himself for Christ’s sake. Sometimes the only way to move forward was to forget. It came so easy to him now, forgetting and moving on, he barely realized he was doing it anymore. What he did realize now, unfortunately, was that this _bond_ of theirs came dangerously close to unearthing all the terrible shit he’d forgotten. And no, he did not want to experience any of it again.

So he shut the fuck up and drank more wine.

Alucard shut the fuck up as well, but he resumed tapping his finger on the table. They did an excellent job of ignoring each other but by the time Trevor was two bowls and two bottles in, he was relaxed enough from the wine to venture back into some meaningless chatter. It wasn’t as if they could avoid interacting forever.

“So, since I assume you’re the one that cooked all this, where’d you learn how to butcher and prepare big game?”

Alucard seemed to accept there was no reason they couldn’t at least try to talk like normal people. Though, arguably, they were the two least normal people in the history of people.

“My mother enjoyed preparing food for us. She felt it was a useful skill for me to learn.”

Trevor shook his head and downed another glass of wine to help that image go down easier.

“Honestly, Alucard, the fucking shocking level of normalcy in your childhood is unbelievable. And do you mean to tell me your _dad_ ate the food too?”

“Vampires are perfectly capable of eating and enjoying normal food but it will not sustain them as it would a human. _Hence the blood drinking._ Are you quite sure you’re a true Belmont? Because your knowledge of vampires is appallingly lacking.”

_Looks like were back to our status quo._

Trevor took another bite and another sip. “Well, if you can eat normal food, then fucking get a bowl and eat with me. It feels rude to eat by myself. In someone else’s house no less.”

“What is this, Belmont? Manners? How quaint. But, yes, I can eat if it will make you more comfortable.”

Alucard pushed away from the table to stand but...he couldn’t. Instead, _he stumbled._ The normally graceful man tripped over his own two feet and had to save himself from a very undignified fall by gripping the edge of the table. His posture was so precarious, Trevor stood and hurried over to him to offer help.

 _“Shit_...what are...are you alright?” He came around the table to steady the other man in his arms. Alucard wobbled and finally accepted Trevor’s assistance.

 _“Fucking hell!”_ He swore as he held on to Trevor with one hand and rubbed his forehead with the other. He squeezed his eyes shut and swayed like a sapling in the wind.

Trevor started getting worried. “Hold on. Just sit back down before you fall and take me with you. Here…” He eased him back down into his chair. “What the fuck is wrong?” Was this somehow his fault? Had he affected Alucard’s health by making him feel his wound? “Are you ill or…”

But when Alucard flopped back into his chair, head tilted towards the ceiling, Trevor saw him smiling. And then he started laughing. Deep at first and muted, then loud and roaring and it didn’t stop.

It was so disturbing, Trevor became convinced he’d driven Alucard mad.

“Alucard! Listen to me! There is something _wrong_ with you but you’re going to have to sober the fuck up and tell me what to do about it!” He grabbed the man’s shoulders and forced him to pay attention. When he did, Trevor noticed that his usually clear, piercing golden gaze was cloudy and unfocused. The laugher died down but he was still smiling when he spoke.

“Exactly right, Belmont. I’m going to have to sober up. Because I believe you’ve _fucking_ gotten me drunk.”

Trevor let go of his shoulders and stood back. “What? But you…” He looked at Alucard. Then he looked at the empty bottles of wine. Then he understood. “But how…?” He couldn’t begin to imagine how. Or how fucking deep this rabbit hole of a blood bond went.

“Alcohol is poison, Belmont.” Trevor could tell he was struggling to speak coherently. “Poison does not affect me. Under _normal_ circumstances that is. It seems your careless indulgence, however, _has_ affected me. So, lucky _fucking_ Adrian can now see what you see, feel what you feel and also share in your self-destructive tendencies. Isn’t that _fucking_ wonderful?!”

Alucard’s dark laughter echoed in the kitchen again.

“Jesus Christ, you must be joking! I’m not even that drunk! How can you be this shit-faced? Don’t fucking blame me because you can’t hold your liquor!”

“Apparently I can’t hold _your_ liquor, Belmont. You have a tolerance. I do not.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. How does that even work? It makes no sense!” Trevor threw his arms up in the air, paced a few turns in front of the fire, and then sat back down. He had no idea what to do or say.

But, because God is cruel, Alucard turned out to be a talkative drunk. And an honest one.

“I’m exhausted, Belmont. Did you know that? I slept for months, yet two days with you, and look at me! Dealing with you is _exhausting_. You’re infuriating. And then you’re amusing. I pity you. I envy you. And then you infuriate me again. I think I hate you. I _should_ hate you. But do you see what I did to myself to keep you alive? _I don’t understand you, Belmont_. That alone is infuriating.”

Trevor looked over at Alucard, disheveled, head lolled, pale skin flushed, formidable defenses down, and he was of two minds.

He could let the very drunk man carry on talking. There was no telling what he could learn. It wasn’t a revelation that Alucard thought him infuriating, or that he pitied him as a lion might pity a field mouse, but it was interesting that he admitted he found him amusing. Trevor could, at the very least, rib him about that later. But then there were the other things he said. What didn’t he understand about him? Did he want to understand more about him? And envy? He envied him. And he put himself at risk for him. Why?

Perhaps the more important question, though, was why did Trevor care to know any of those things? He’d never cared to know much about anyone before because he was certain that if any normal person knew anything about him they’d run screaming.

But Alucard wasn’t normal.

It was tempting, _really tempting,_ to hear what Alucard’s loose lips might say but, in the end, Trevor went with his other option.

“Listen Alucard, here’s what’s going to happen:” Trevor went over to him and tilted his chin up so he could look into his eyes again. He spoke slowly as if speaking to a child. “You’re too drunk to do anything but cause trouble and make regrets, so I’m going to help you to bed right now and make sure none of that happens, got it?”

“I don’t need your help, Belmont. And I’m afraid I’m full up with regrets already. As for causing trouble, I’ll warn you that I am feeling dangerously heedless right now.”

Alucard shut his eyes and leaned into Trevor’s space. He reached up lazily and hooked his fingers into the collar of his shirt, gently pulling him forward. One of Trevor’s hands went to graze the grip of his short sword, but he didn’t draw the weapon and he didn’t back away even when Alucard’s other hand slid around to the nape of his neck and grabbed at a fistful of his hair. Trevor watched Alucard’s mouth move as he spoke in a whisper.

_“I can smell your blood, Belmont.”_


	5. Siren's Song

Adrian tightened his grip. The pounding of Belmont’s heart called to him like a siren song. _His own blood_ inside Belmont called to him, and beckoned him closer to the rocks.

He was losing control. Some beast within him called _Alucard_ was now speaking for him, acting for him. _That_ name. That name others called him, that never felt like his own, because it _wasn’t_. His name was Adrian. Adrian, who had a mother and a father. Adrian, who had passions and desires that moved him beyond blood and power. Adrian who knew happiness and sadness and felt things besides hunger and hate. Adrian, who had always been in control.

But, thanks to Belmont’s _fucking_ vice, Adrian’s control was being stripped away, heartbeat by tempting heartbeat, leaving them both at the mercy of Alucard, who wanted nothing more than to revel in a vice of his own and take what was his.

For what was Belmont now, if not his? He could smell himself all over the man, their blood irrevocably mingled together. He was Alucard’s to taste and his to take. So he tugged at his collar and at his hair and pulled him in closer.

“You should be protecting yourself, Belmont.” He taunted aloud. At the same time, the small voice of Adrian, relegated to the role of observer, asked silently,

_Why is he not protecting himself?_

“Do I need to protect myself?” Belmont asked, his voice deliciously strained, but still deliciously obstinate. He was fondling his sword. A futile gesture and he knew it, which is likely why he kept it sheathed, but it made Adrian want him more for it. In spite of fear and certain defeat, Adrian knew he would fight. It was a beautiful, wild defiance this Trevor Belmont had. To conquer a lamb was no achievement. But for wolf to devour wolf was a decadence that Adrian suddenly found irresistible.

“You mistake me, Belmont. You mistake my patience for interest. You mistake my restraint for kindness. The only thing that interests me right now is this…”

He slowly dragged the tip of his nose from Belmont’s Adam’s apple up to the lobe of his ear, inhaling one deep wonderfully enticing breath along the way. He let his lips brush against Belmont’s neck as he spoke making the man shudder involuntarily.

“And the only kindness that moves me right now is to let you enjoy it so I can hear you beg me for more.”

~

When Alucard opened his mouth again, Trevor knew it wasn’t going to be for more talking. So, he committed and took his chance.

He planted his feet, braced himself, then he grabbed Alucard up in a bear hug and heaved him over his shoulder, ass up, head down and feet dangling, in one smooth movement.

“Up we go!” Trevor grunted and he pivoted to walk as quickly as he could out of the kitchen. “I said I’d help you to bed, didn’t I?”

As he carried Alucard like a sack of potatoes, Trevor forced himself to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that _this was the dumbest fucking thing he’d ever done._ But really though, his only hope had been to take him by surprise and since he managed to make it out into the corridor with little more than a shocked gasp from the drunk over his shoulder maybe this was actually the smartest thing he’d ever done.

Once in the hallway, Alucard tried to twist free. Now that he didn’t have fangs at his neck, Trevor felt he was in a marginally less vulnerable position, so he dropped his burden to avoid a struggle. Better safe than sorry though, he took a step back and held his hands up in the universal gesture of ‘stay the fuck back’. If this came to a serious issue of self-defense, he didn’t think he could rely on Alucard’s inebriated incoordination to save him. He was under no delusion the man couldn’t still pin him down with no effort at all, drunk or not. They’d danced that dance before and it would doubtless come to the same pyrrhic conclusion. This time though, Trevor had no desire for mutually assured destruction.

Alucard steadied himself against the wall with one hand. He looked over at Trevor, eyes like firebrands behind a curtain of pale gold hair that had fallen forward into his face. And even though he advanced on shaky legs, Trevor cautiously retreated in equal measure.

“Alucard, let’s think about this.” Trevor did his best to sound like a he was the hunter here and not the other way round. “You’re _drunk_. I know it’s your first time but you’re smart enough to know it does things to people’s heads. You’re just... _disinhibited_ right now. Nothing good will come of…”

In a blinding flash, almost as if he occupied two places at once, Alucard shot forward and knocked Trevor back against the opposite wall of the corridor. The impact stole his breath for a moment but he wasn’t hurt. He was, however, now trapped between a stone wall and a stone-faced vampire. Alucard penned him in with his arms and inched his body forward. Trevor froze in place. Their knees and boots were tangled together, their pelvises were flush and Alucard’s fangs were too close for comfort.

“I am not after anything _good_ , you idiot.” He was speaking into Trevor’s ear _again_ and the warm tickle of the words on his skin made him shudder uncontrollably, _again_. “I am a _vampire_. And I have given you my blood. Do you have any idea how that _feels_ , Belmont? What it means?”

Trevor stayed calm. This wasn’t the first alcohol driven fight he’d ever talked his way out of.

“So far, I’d say it means I am _never fucking drinking again.”_ As an afterthought, having no idea if it was going to be the right or the wrong thing to say, he added, “And you’re only _half_ vampire, remember?”

When sharp teeth grazed his skin, he was sure it had definitely been the wrong thing to say, but when they didn’t penetrate him, he thought maybe he had a chance. Just in case, he reached for his Morning Star and held his breath.

 _Don’t make me use this on you._ He pleaded in his head. _Please don’t make me use this on you..._

Trevor waited. He waited for something, anything, any small twitch of movement that might spell both their ends. But Alucard didn’t move. He neither advanced nor retreated. He hovered, fangs out, mouth open, and palms pressed against the wall at either side of Trevor’s head.

_“Half human.”_

Alucard said it so softly, Trevor felt it more than he heard it and he continued to hold his breath. After too many tense seconds to count, Alucard balled one hand into a fist, pulled it back and punched into the wall.

The stone didn’t stand a chance. Trevor jerked his head away from the flying shards of masonry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alucard’s knuckles cut and bloodied, embedded in the rock, and then he saw the skin mend as quickly as it was torn.

Alucard stepped back and hung his head. He exhaled heavily. So did Trevor, and he released his grip on the Morning Star.

“Belmont...” Alucard said his name in a low rasp. He sounded spent. “Will you...will you please help me upstairs?”

“Absolutely.” Trevor gingerly pulled his arms down from the wall and slung one of them across his own shoulders so he could support his weight, then he held onto the other man’s waist. He carefully turned them around and they started walking.

Since Trevor had no fucking idea how to get back up to Alucard’s bedroom, he was happy that the man still had enough sense about him to direct their march even if he did need help keeping his steps in a straight line.

Neither of them spoke along the way, and no further attempts were made at Trevor’s vital arteries. They went slowly, in silence. Trevor chanced a few glances at Alucard’s face, which was half hidden by his long hair as he continued to look down. His cheeks were still flushed pink but his lips were now shut tight, nostrils flaring with his breath. Trevor wasn’t able to see his eyes and he wondered if Alucard was avoiding having to look at the man he nearly took a bite out of or if he just needed to make sure his feet kept moving properly. Trevor held onto his hand that was draped across his shoulder. Though his fingertips were cool, his body was warm. Very humanly, reassuringly warm. _And heavy._ Five thousand fucking flights of stairs later, his body was _very fucking heavy._

 _God almighty, how did I ever think this bastard seemed weightless?_ Trevor smiled to himself, but he didn’t say what he was thinking. _And who’s carrying who now, huh, you tall asshole?_

When they finally got to the bedroom, Trevor wasn’t sure who was more relieved to fall down onto the bed, him or Alucard. And fall down they did as a single unit of drunken exhaustion. They lay side by side, legs hanging off the edge of the bed for a little while, catching their breath. When his leg muscles finally stopped burning, Trevor got up to stoke the fire in the hearth and light some candles. Alucard didn’t move, but he did eventually speak.

“Thank you Belmont. And...I am very sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. My fault anyway, I suppose. So, I’m sorry too. To be honest, it seems like the better end of this deal went to me. I got my life saved and a nice little dream about a run in the woods. You got stung with a whip, gutted by a knife and drowned in drink. Maybe I should’ve just let you bite me.”

Alucard shifted on the bed and sat up. “No. I lost control. You are not to blame.”

“Well, you didn’t lose _all_ your control.” Trevor sat down in the large armchair by the fire. He stretched and propped his feet up on the footstool. He thought he could probably fall asleep right there and he marveled at how all the living spaces in the castle were so damn cozy. And not a single coffin in sight.

“Thank you also for talking to me until I came to my senses. It helped to remind me of my other half.” Alucard was looking down at his hands as if he expected to see Trevor’s blood on them.

Trevor found himself wanting to provide reassurance. “You did mention you’d never do that sort of thing without consent first, so I knew it wasn’t you talking. It was close, but you didn’t. Which is good because even though this is your first time being drunk you’re too old to blame shit decisions on youthful stupidity.”

Alucard cocked his head towards him. “I’m actually much younger than you, Belmont. I found your birth records in your family’s archives. I thought Sypha would have told you. I didn’t have as normal a childhood as you seem to think I did. It was a very short one actually. I grew and matured much faster than a human child.” He looked into the fire then and furrowed his brow. “I think it made my mother sad...”

At first, Trevor wanted to be annoyed that the imperious Alucard was actually his junior, but something in that last bit he said and the way he said it made his heart ache.

“Well, you’re still as much human as you are vampire.” He said quickly, wanting to change the subject from the man’s murdered mother. “And uh...I should probably apologize for forgetting that myself sometimes and...and making you feel otherwise.” Alucard had been doing nothing but helping him for two days straight. Which made him more human than most humans Trevor knew, regardless of his lineage.

“No.” Alucard shook his head. “No. You are right not to let your guard down entirely. Sometimes…” He sighed and let his head rest in his hands. “Sometimes I fear there is no more humanity to me than there was to my father.”

 _Oh god._ Trevor looked away to hide the uncontrollable roll of his eyes. _We have definitely entered the morose reflection portion of Alucard’s drunken evening._

Trevor echoed Alucard’s sigh, resigned himself and decided he’d lose nothing by humoring him. He’d spilled his own guts in ale-induced melancholy to more than one barkeep when he was younger, before he realized it never helped. Since this was Alucard’s first time being drunk, and since, apparently, he was young enough to indulge in some drunk sentimentality, he was happy to help facilitate. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning.

“I’d say saving the human race earned you whatever humanity you might have been missing on account of your dad. You saved me too and most people wouldn’t have given a shit about saving someone like me.” Trevor considered his next words, and thought back on some of the things Alucard had said earlier that he only now, upon his own drunken reflection, decided to hear. “And you know, your father had enough humanity to love your mother, right? Weren’t you just telling me that yourself? And he had enough humanity to make you. That’s something.”

“Yes.” Alucard agreed, though he sounded as if he didn’t really believe it. “That is...something.”

Their heart-to-heart came to an abrupt end after that and they said nothing further to each other. Trevor sat in the chair, Alucard lay on the bed and they kept to their own thoughts. It wasn’t long before Alucard’s breathing changed, deeper, more even and with a soft snore signaling he’d fallen asleep. Since he was still awake and still guilty of getting the poor man pass-out drunk in the first place, Trevor wanted to at least take his boots off for him and get him under the blankets with his head properly on a pillow.

It took some awkward maneuvering, that Alucard fortunately slept through, but Trevor succeeded in making him more comfortable.

After all that, he sat down right there at the side of the bed while he gathered up enough strength and motivation to move somewhere else. He wasn’t sure where he was going to move to though. He didn’t like the idea of _not_ giving Alucard some privacy while he slept off the second-hand intoxication but he liked the idea of wandering around the castle by himself looking for another bedroom even less.

So he just sat there and watched the hypnotic rise and fall of Alucard’s chest. He looked deceptively angelic lying there, serene as could be, hiding fangs behind his too pretty face.

Trevor let his eyes travel down to Alucard’s hands that he’d arranged atop the blankets at his sides. They looked almost delicate. No old scars like his own. No callouses from being forced to use a weapon far too much. No dirt under his neatly groomed fingernails. Those hands certainly didn’t look like they could punch through stone. Or pull Trevor’s hair and crane his neck back so firmly that he still felt the ache in his scalp.

But that was the dichotomy of Dracula’s son, he supposed. And it seemed like it was difficult for even Alucard to wrap his big fat head around how diametrically opposed his two halves were. The Belmonts weren’t so different though, as Alucard had been quick to remind him, and for all his feigned offense, Trevor knew he was right. His predecessors had as much blood on their hands as any vampire and they’d always had one foot in heaven and one foot in hell.

Trevor continued to sit on Alucard’s bed and stare at him. Maybe it was because he was usually so unreadable, this was his opportunity to look his fill and figure him out. Fat chance, but worth a try. Trevor never normally had a hard time sizing people up and learning their intentions just by looking at them. The skill kept him alive more often than not. Alucard was different though.

Pretty face with deadly fangs, delicate hands with supernatural strength. Otherworldly golden eyes and...and…Trevor took a deep breath in through his nose... _and the scent of him…_

_What is it?_

Why did he always notice it and still not know what the fuck it was he smelled like? Why did it grab his attention so much?

On a strange impulse, Trevor reached out and picked up a few strands of Alucard’s hair that were spread out upon the pillow, framing his head like a halo. It felt soft between the sword roughened pads of his fingers. On an even stranger impulse he brought the locks up to his nose and inhaled.

Alucard smelled like clean linens and fresh rushes. He also smelled like sword metal and whip leather. He smelled of the untamed forest at night but also of boring old books and inkwells. He smelled half human, half demon.

He smelled like every day of Trevor’s childhood.

Equal parts pure and profane, Alucard reminded Trevor of growing up. Memories flooded him as he sat there with Alucard’s hair spilling over his fingers because he _finally understood._ He remembered playing in His Tree with odds and ends and sticks and stones as normal children did. He also remembered playing beneath that tree as Belmont children did with consecrated whips and holy weapons of righteousness pretending to vanquish terrible monsters.

In this one place, in this one person, was everything Trevor knew of life. Everything he was comfortable with was personified in the sleeping creature before him who existed in defiance of the natural order because _fuck the natural order._ He needed no justification, no explanation. He existed. He lived, as the Belmonts had once lived, how Trevor wished he could live, one foot in heaven, one in hell and suffering not the judgement of fools.

To Trevor, Adrian Tepes smelled like _home._

Trevor dropped his hair and stood. Somehow he was more nervous now after just recognizing the scent of the man’s hair than when he was staring down his fangs. Something about this seemed more dangerous than the prospect of simply fighting Alucard off.

He turned away but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the room. The mere thought of leaving made him uneasy. He needed to stay. Right here. For some reason. So, he walked back over to the armchair, took off his boots, settled in, warm and comfortable by the fire, and fell asleep.

If only he’d remembered there was no more respite to be found in his dreams.

This time he dreamt he was standing still. He was in the corridor outside the kitchen, as he had been earlier, with Alucard pressed against him. But this time things were different. This time instead of reaching for his side arm he reached out to rest his hand on Alucard’s shoulder. Instead of strategizing escape, he leaned in. This time, when Alucard tugged at his hair, harder than a human could, harder than a human would, he followed along obediently and bared his throat. He could smell Alucard’s hair again and he closed his eyes to concentrate on it. This time, in his dream _-But was this his dream? Or Alucard’s?-_ Alucard asked.

 _“Please...Please, Trevor…”_ And he waited for an answer. Lips touching skin, he waited with infinite patience as if he’d wait for all eternity, parched and starving.

Dream-Trevor answered as all dream-selves always answer. Without fear or reservation, without thinking or worrying.

_“Yes...Adrian...yes.”_

~

Adrian knew better than to stand up right away. First, he tentatively opened his eyes. It was morning, likely just past dawn. The fire in the hearth had gone out but he was still warm beneath a blanket and with his head on a pillow.

_He would never live this down._

He remembered with perfect fucking clarity everything that had happened the previous night. Belmont getting him drunk. Belmont successfully resisting his disgraceful drunken advances. Belmont carrying him. Belmont comforting him. And Belmont _fucking_ tucking him in to bed.

_Fucking Belmont._

He’d even dreamt of the man. It was a drunken fantasy of a dream. A fantasy where _Alucard_ got what he wanted. And _Adrian_ had enjoyed it.

Adrian squeezed his eyes shut again and shook his head, trying to shake off the _very disturbing_ images it was best he not indulge in. Bad enough his unconscious self had dreamt them, they had no place in his head when he was awake and sober.

But there was no erasing anything else that occured last night. It had all happened. Now he knew better and last night would never happen again. If he had to sew Belmont’s fucking lips shut to stop him from imbibing, it would _never_ happen again.

Adrian sat up slowly and looked around. Belmont wasn’t in the room with him. Since he knew for certain he’d stayed and slept in the chair all night, he must have awoken not too long ago. When he felt ready, he got out of bed and did his best to put his boots on without vomiting on them. His head throbbed with each footfall as he went in search of Belmont. He had no idea _why_ his first instinct upon awakening was to search him out, but it was, so he did. It wasn’t hard. After finally acknowledging it was there, the call of Belmont’s blood, he was now unable to ignore it. It was like a low buzz somewhere in the back of his brain. All he needed to do was pause and concentrate and he knew exactly where to find him.

Adrian walked downstairs, through the front doors of the castle and outside. The sky was still mostly dark with only a few streaks of deep orange at the horizon. A fresh layer of snow had fallen and the brisk morning air calmed his roiling stomach.

Right in the middle of the idyllic winter scene was Belmont. Alone, in the cold, he moved systematically through fighting stances with his Morning Star. Adrian watched as hot puffs of breath billowed from his mouth and hung in the air before dissipating. The weapon’s metal links clinked rhythmically as Belmont swung it in elegant arcs striking snow off branches with expert precision. It was a fine weapon and its owner wielded it with unparalleled mastery as if he was dancing to the music it made.

Belmont swung out again but then side stepped so the long chain wrapped around his chest, shortening its reach to practice launching a close quarters attack. For some ridiculous reason he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The metal dug into his skin and criss-crossed over his torso. Something about the sight of Belmont trussed up in chains was indecently appealing. Maybe if he kept the man chained up he would be less likely to cause any further trouble.

Dismissing the errant thought as an unrealistic flight of fancy, Adrian continued to observe Belmont’s exertions.

Even though he wasn’t wearing his shirt, Adrian could see he was sweating. One small drop beaded at the back of his neck, just below his hairline. Adrian flexed his fingers at the remembered sensation of grabbing Belmont’s hair in his fist and pulling tight. The bead of sweat slid down Belmont’s back, along the midline of his spine and disappeared beneath the waist of his trousers. Adrian grimaced with guilt when he noticed a fresh bruise on his shoulders likely from when he slammed him backwards against the wall.

From bruises to scars, Belmont had countless imperfections and yet, Adrian couldn’t help but admire the form of him. When not hassled by having to suffer through normal human interactions, when he was moving and fighting, Belmont was graceful. He was corded muscle and lithe action. He was full of confidence when he was in his element, attacking monsters rather than talking to people. He seemed to know who he was in those moments with clear blue eyes and clear-headed purpose.

As he stood there in the snow, Adrian forgot about his nausea and the throbbing at his temples, his own head feeling more clear. A gust of wind blew past but Belmont kept moving, not noticing how it made the temperature drop. He also still didn’t seem to notice that Adrian was watching. It felt dishonest somehow to continue standing there without announcing his presence, so he walked towards him.

When Adrian was close enough to have to duck under one of Belmont’s swings, barely escaping decapitation, he finally noticed him.

“Shit!” Belmont jumped back and gathered his weapon in. He hung it at his hip and reached out to Adrian. “I didn’t see you there, are you okay? You almost didn’t clear that.”

“I’m fine. But you are correct, it appears as if I am still not quite myself this morning.”

Belmont scratched his head and then rubbed at his bruised shoulder. The action did nothing to assuage Adrian’s guilt over having caused that bruise. “Yeah, I’m a little hungover too. Or maybe you’re hungover because I’m hungover? I still don’t really understand how this works.”

Sadly, neither did Adrian.

“As much as it pains me to say it, I think we’re going to have to be more transparent with each other moving forward. Perhaps in doing so we can prevent any further unwanted or potentially dangerous situations such as last night.”

“How much of it do you remember anyway?”

“I have an eidetic memory, Belmont so unfortunately for me I remember every alcohol-sodden second in vivid detail.”

“Mm.” Belmont made no further comment and went to fetch his shirt from where it hung on the low branch of a nearby tree. As he pulled it on, Adrian decided to offer compliments where they were due and also indulge his curiosity.

“Your form was quite good, but why were you out here cracking your whip at the crack of dawn while hungover?”

“I, uh…” Belmont suspiciously looked everywhere but in his eyes. So much for transparency. He walked past him back towards the castle. Adrian fell into step beside him. “Just blowing off some steam...I guess.”

Adrian looked down as they walked through the castle doors so as not to pressure Belmont with eye contact he did not want. Perhaps he had the right of it, that being out here and working kinks out of stiff muscles was better than lying abed. Adrian felt sluggish and slow. His first instincts would have been to rest to be rid of these feelings, but that was how vampires healed when healing was called for. Was it more human to resist it and seek activity to reawaken the senses? Would that be more effective? Or was it only Belmont who…

Adrian stumbled backwards as Belmont’s arm struck him in the chest. The action forced Adrian behind him as he drew his weapon again. He looked up and saw that Belmont had put himself between him and an unexpected visitor.

A human man sat calmly on the bottom step of the grand staircase. He was handsome and broad shouldered with a shaved head and dark eyes.

Belmont spoke first. _“Who the fuck are you?”_

The man ignored him and looked directly at Adrian.

“You are Adrian Tepes.” The intruder stood slowly and then he turned his head. “And you are Trevor Belmont.”

Belmont swung his Morning Star in threatening circles at his side, keeping Adrian behind him. “We know who we are, thanks. So I’m going to ask again, _who the fuck are you?”_

The stranger clasped his hands behind his back revealing a familiar looking knife at his belt that had previously been concealed under his black robes. He offered a polite bow of his head, never taking his eyes from them.

“My name is Isaac.” He said plainly. Then he added with what sounded like pride, “And I once served Dracula.”

If he’d been in his right mind, Adrian might have handled things differently. As it was, however, he was not the first to act.

Belmont was faster and he immediately attacked, clearly not interested in asking anymore questions.


	6. Brother's Keeper

_How dare you._ Trevor kept repeating in his head. _How fucking_ dare _you!_

The man was fast. Trevor swung low, then high, then left, right, left. The chain of his Morning Star grazed the stone of the pillars in the hall as it whipped past but the strike of the weighted end smashed against nothing but empty flagstones. Isaac dodged his attacks with almost clairvoyant reflexes until he managed to get himself within close enough range to make Trevor’s whip impractical.

Trevor gathered in the chain for one last throw but Isaac was able to catch hold of it with his knife to tangle him up. They paused there, locked together, each pulling with all their might to disarm the other.

Trevor grit his teeth. He continued his silent, seething litany, _No fucking chance, asshole. I won’t let you. I won’t let you!_

Some part of him knew his rage was disproportionate. Yes, he’d been targeted. Yes, he’d suffered. And yes, he wanted revenge, but it was more than that. A beast inside him had broken free to fight. Not for himself, though, for he’d given up on himself long ago. They were all slaves to their family’s wishes as Alucard had once said to him, and that was as true for the son of a Belmont as it was for the son of a Tepes. Trevor had been wandering the world a slave to his family’s calling, doing the best he could with what he had, but all he had was a hollow husk of a life. Empty. Meaningless.

Had he ever really cared? This new beast though had forced its way past his meandering indifference. It had a clear and singular purpose that made Trevor suddenly _care_ a great fucking deal about things. First among those things being this interloper Isaac and seeing him fucking dead.

_It felt good to care._

Trevor had woken up that morning hung-over and confused. He’d felt uncomfortable in his own skin. He’d had weird dreams that he feared weren’t his own. _He’d had weird dreams that he feared might have been his own._ Shadow sparring outside in the cold had helped a little, and it certainly seemed like he was fairing better than Alucard, but he still wasn’t quite right in the head as they walked back into the castle.

And then this happened.

Trevor tugged his whip with both hands while Isaac strained to keep hold of his knife. The other man spoke through a clenched jaw. _“I am not your enemy, Trevor Belmont.”_

But Trevor couldn’t hear him. All he heard was the driving, all-consuming chant in his head, over and over,

 _I have to protect him. I_ will _protect him. Protect him. Protect him..._

 _I won’t let you fucking touch him..._ Trevor swore to himself as he retracted his whip and drew his sword.

~

Adrian couldn’t have held Belmont back if he’d tried. Faster than he’d ever seen the man move he struck out at Isaac with his whip. There was no mistaking Belmont’s lethal intent and yet his father’s former general seemed to focus his energy on simply avoiding the attacks rather than countering them or launching his own.

Adrian would never deny Belmont his vengeance for what had happened to him but something about the scene playing out disturbed him. Belmont was merciless and were Isaac less adept he would be a bludgeoned mess on the floor. Even when Belmont had thought Adrian was Dracula he’d not so suddenly attacked with such single-minded ferocity. Despite his frequent lack of seriousness, Belmont was a thoughtful fighter, smart and not prone to emotional recklessness. This, though, this was vicious and unyielding.

Adrian watched as Isaac pulled his forgemaster’s blade to save himself from the Morning Star. The two weapons tangled together and the man spoke, _pleaded in fact,_ with Belmont, “I am not your enemy…” he said, his dark eyes unblinking.

For some reason, Adrian believed him.

Adrian focused his attention on the knife and he reached back into the recesses of his memory to recall what he saw when he touched Belmont’s scar. He let the floodgates open again, let the pain and loneliness wash over him anew. He struggled to stifle the awful visceral response to the vision before it threatened to cloud his perceptions as it had before. _See more than just the knife,_ he ordered himself and he closed his eyes.

 _See more, Adrian_ , _there must be more to see..._

He saw Belmont’s blood dripping from the weapon, saturating it red. It was the weapon that Isaac now held to hold off the Morning Star. He dug deeper, reached farther, looked harder. He saw sunlight flickering through bare branches. He saw shaking hands holding the hilt of the blade. Those hands had thin, _pale_ fingers. He saw a man with waves of silver-grey hair, a gaunt face with bruises, some fresh and dark, some faded and yellow. He had hollow eyes and a collar with a chain around his neck.

The man he saw was not Isaac.

Adrian pulled himself free from the vision, breathless and clutching the phantom pain in his stomach. He blinked his eyes back into the present to see Belmont relentlessly attacking with his short sword, and Isaac doing his best to parry each blow.

“Belmont! Enough! Stop this, both of you!” Adrian shouted, but it wasn’t sufficient to get through to either of them.

Isaac was forced to retreat up the staircase. He deflected a glancing horizontal slash meant for his jugular only to come up short when Belmont flipped his sword in the air, caught it with his off hand and stabbed forward, aiming for Isaac’s midsection. Isaac’s only defense was to fall on his back against the stairs. He successfully avoided being run through and was even able to counter because, when Belmont lunged again he was ready, pushing him square in the chest with his boot, forcing him to stumble backwards. It bought Isaac the time to stand and bring his knife up to meet Belmont’s sword. Again the two were locked in place, pushing against one another.

Belmont leaned into their crossed blades, adding weight to his advance with his other arm. Snarling like an animal, he spit a threat into Isaac’s face.

_“I will rip your fucking heart out if you touch him!”_

Isaac’s eyes went as wide as Adrian’s.

_What? ‘Touch him’...? ...me?_

The insane statement finally made Adrian collect himself enough to act.

~

One second Alucard was still at the castle’s front door, the next he was on top of them. He grabbed Isaac by the back of his robes with one hand and hurled him like a ragdoll across the hall where he slammed into the far wall and slid down to the floor in a heap. With his other hand he grabbed Trevor’s sword arm by the wrist and yanked him in until they were face to face.

Trevor was panting. His vision was tunneled and white. His ears were ringing with bloodlust. But he saw, with absolute clarity, the gold of Alucard’s eyes.

“Belmont! Control yourself!” Alucard yelled right at him, but Trevor still wasn’t ready to hear it. Instead, he looked over at Isaac who was slowly picking himself up off the ground. Alucard saw his gaze divert and he dropped Trevor’s wrist to move his hand up to the back of his neck and weave his fingers into his hair. He tugged at his head, gently this time compared to last night, to redirect his attention back on him.

 _“Trevor.”_ He said, calmly, pointedly. _“Stop this. I am in no danger. Stop now.”_

Trevor let his sword fall from his hand and he retreated, shrinking from Alucard’s touch. He walked backwards shakily, away from Alucard and away from Isaac until his heels hit the stairs. He lowered himself down to sit on the bottom step. It felt like he’d just been pulled back from a cliff. His heart was pounding up in his throat and his ears were still ringing. He also still wanted to fucking kill this Isaac person but enough logic was slowly seeping back into his brain to realize that this was not a fight for survival. Neither his, nor Alucard’s. Why in the fucking world he suddenly felt personally responsible for Alucard’s survival was a mystery but _holy fucking hell_ , just now, Alucard’s safety had consumed every particle of his being. Trevor was fairly certain the all-powerful immortal fucking son of Dracula didn’t need anyone’s protection. So he did his best to calm himself the fuck down and give Alucard a chance to manage the situation better than he had.

Isaac sheathed his knife back in his belt and approached them warily.

“You are skilled beyond what I anticipated.” He said to Trevor with half a smile. “That is good. You will need those skills to fight our common enemy.”

Alucard rounded on the man, eyes narrowed, fangs bared. “Explain yourself immediately. And explain why I should not kill you myself for entering my keep uninvited.”

“I had it under control, you know.” Trevor mumbled. “Could’ve just let me take care of the killing.”

Neither Isaac nor Alucard paid any attention to him, so he just folded his arms across his chest and sat, catching his breath.

Isaac offered a response but it was hardly the explanation Alucard had demanded.

“You have eliminated your father, taken control of his keep, and for nearly a year, you have detached yourself from the goings on of the world beyond your door. This was foolish, son of Dracula. Especially when keeping such friends as these.” He gestured to where Trevor sat sulking.

“You fucking…” Trevor almost got up to retrieve his sword but Alucard held his hand out to stop him.

Alucard took a threatening step towards Isaac. “And who are _you_ to judge _me_?”

Isaac held up his hands, obviously not wanting to pick a fight with someone he had no hope of besting. “As I said, I once served your father. I believe coming here is what he would have wanted of me and above all, he was my friend, whose memory I wish to honor.”

“Bullshit.” Trevor called out and he stood. “That is rank bullshit. There’s more. I can fucking see it in his beady little eyes.”

Alucard again held him back. “I will give you one last chance to be clear about your intentions before I allow Belmont to kill you.”

Isaac volunteered a bit more but it hardly sounded like everything. “What I said was true but, yes, I do have my own motivations. As do we all. The man who once owned this knife,” -he gestured to the blade at his belt but knew better than to draw it again- “was my compatriot in service to Dracula. It was he who attacked you Belmont, under duress and by the orders of his new mistress. If not for me, she would be _your_ new mistress also.”

Alucard said nothing, but Isaac had paused and seemed to be waiting for him to react.

Trevor reacted for him. “Okay, so, that’s not at all clear, which means I can kill him now, right?”

Unfortunately, Trevor didn’t get the go-ahead yet.

“I remember you.” Alucard said with a sharp edge. “I saw you at my father’s side when I entered the castle to confront him. And yet I found him alone in the end. So is this ‘new mistress’ yours as well?”

Isaac stiffened at the accusation. “Though at the time I was ready to die for your father, he felt my path lay elsewhere. He saved my life by banishing me from the castle through his mirror. After Dracula, I have no desire to serve another. He was an unparalleled genius who commanded respect and _earned_ his power. This woman is simply one among many insects swarming in vain, trying to replace him. I would see her dead.”

“And she is a vampire with a grandiose dream of controlling an empire, I presume?” Alucard asked the question with a subtle disgust in his tone. Trevor was doing better picking up on the man’s many unspoken opinions.

Isaac nodded in the affirmative. “Hector, my former comrade who stabbed you, Belmont, was talented at his art but he had a soft heart and was unfortunately persuaded to go against Dracula by this woman. I did not know what became of him after we were separated. Once I was able, I sought him out to exact my own revenge but little did I know his suffering. Had he stayed and died alongside your father, it would have been a blessing.”

Trevor’s head was starting to hurt from too much thinking. “Soooo…I should go and kill this Hector person and maybe his vampire girlfriend too? But not you. Am I following this correctly?”

Alucard and Isaac seemed to be having a separate conversation that did not include Trevor.

“You claim to have saved Belmont. How?” Alucard asked. “And why?”

Trevor corrected himself: they actually all seemed to be having different conversations. And he wasn’t following any of them. But he listened to Isaac talk anyway.

“I was back in this country for mere days when I heard the stories of how a speaker magician, a Belmont hunter and the son of Dracula himself had ended a vampire war against humanity by killing his father. It was a captivating tale, but you should have warned your speaker friend that too much talking can be dangerous.”

 _Shit._ Now _that_ Trevor understood. He’d warned Sypha more than once that talking freely about things like moving castles, black magic and Dracula would only cause trouble. Usually in the form of pitchforks and torches. The burned down Belmont manor across the way was testament enough to that.

Alucard narrowed his eyes at Trevor. “You allowed Sypha to tell all and sundry that we three killed Dracula?”

“Hey! I told her to be careful! Do you honestly think she’d listen to me? And, by the way, she is a _Speaker_. Keeping her mouth shut is pretty much the opposite of her job description.”

Isaac continued on with his own tale. “The remaining vampire lords have been scrambling for territory since they found out about your father’s death. Fear of him was the only thing keeping the rabble in check. Without the strength of his will they are a leaderless mob. Hector’s mistress Carmilla is one among many trying to consolidate power and while I care little for vampire politics I find myself wanting to help him escape from them.” Isaac’s placid face contorted in hate briefly before he schooled his features again, “And as I said, _she must die.”_

Never had it been so clear to Trevor why his family were hunters. It was so much easier to just kill bad shit indiscriminately than parse out all this fucking intrigue. “Look, can we get back to me, that knife and why the fuck any of this matters?”

“Thanks to your speaker friend, Carmilla now knows that Dracula’s son has friends who were strong enough to help him take control of this castle and kill that which none among us thought could be killed. I think she believes that if she can find a way to control those friends perhaps _she_ can take control of this castle herself and unseat _you_.”

Alucard scoffed. “Unseat me? Do those fools think I did this to rule over them?”

“Ha!” Trevor pointed at Alucard “Who’s being naïve now? I _seriously_ doubt a bunch of vampires would believe you killed your father just to save humanity.” He turned to Isaac. “Can we get back to me, you and the knife now…”

Isaac finally got to the point. “I was tracking Hector when I saw him and his vampire keepers attack you. I was not able to stop him from inflicting your wound but I was able to stop him from taking you back to his mistress. You would have been nothing but an undead drone to do her bidding if he’d been allowed to finish his work. Before I arrived, you killed several of their group and I was able to kill several more, but they must have had orders to return with Hector with or without acquiring you so the vampires who held his chains escaped. Which left me with you. I only know how to cause the type of wound you sustained, not how to reverse it so I took you to where I knew the speakers would find you. When they decided to bring you here, I followed in secret. It saved me the trouble of having to find the castle myself.”

Trevor couldn’t quite bring himself to say thank you. If he knew one thing about humans it was that none of them ever did anything without desire for secondary gain. “So this is all because you want to save your little friend Hector, _when you originally wanted to kill him,_ and murder this Carmilla. And you’re here because you think we’re going to help.”

“I need no one’s help.” Isaac brushed his fingers against his knife. “I can make my own army.”

Trevor rubbed his hand across his abdomen, remembering now how that knife’s work had felt. Alucard made the same motion on himself as if remembering also.

“But _me_ killing Carmilla does not help _you_ , Adrian Tepes. Or Alucard, if that is what you wish to be called. Another would rise to absorb her dominion and then that vampire would be a threat to you and this castle. And on and on. I simply wish to see Dracula’s legacy preserved rather than pillaged.”

Alucard was silent and expressionless, but the mention of some nameless, _endless,_ future threat made the ringing in Trevor’s ears start again and his hands itched to hold a weapon. He kept himself in check though, and let Isaac continue his endless fucking monologue.

“As for wanting to save Hector when I had previously wanted him dead also…” Isaac stared past them, his words thoughtful now. “I have had much time to reflect on things while I traveled. Part of me believes that actions have consequences, and Hector is suffering those consequences. But, we were brothers for a time, with a common purpose, united under Dracula. And,” he spoke to Alucard now, “your father cared for him once, in his way, as he care for me, in his way. So, as I said, I wish to honor what I believe his wishes would have been.”

 _How ironic,_ Trevor thought and he muttered under his breath, “We’re all slaves to our family’s wishes…”

Isaac tilted his head in curiosity at his statement. “That is an interesting thing to say. Perhaps it is accurate, though I cannot speak from experience. Are my actions the way of things with family?”

“Fuck if I know, ask him.” Trevor shrugged and pointed at Alucard. “He’s the one who had a ‘normal’ family.”

Alucard straightened and glared down his nose at Isaac. Trevor knew that signaled he was done with this entire convoluted encounter. And about time too, because this was more bullshit than anyone should have to deal with before breakfast.

“So you hope to honor my father by rescuing your former brother? And you wish to drag me into a territory war because you believe that too would honor him? Allow me to be clear: I have no desire to sully myself by becoming involved in the power struggles of vampires. If someone wants to take this castle they are welcome to try. It won’t turn out the way they envision. Otherwise, we wish to be left alone. _Now leave us.”_

Trevor raised an eyebrow. _Um, ‘we’? And, ‘us’...?_

Alucard’s mouth hung open for a moment as he realized what he’d just said.

Isaac looked back and forth between the two of them. “Be careful not to follow too closely in your father’s footsteps. Or your enemies will find ways of attacking you without storming your keep.”

 _“Is that a threat?”_ Alucard’s patience was almost gone.

“It is a warning. You may not want to rule over your kind, but better you than the alternatives. As long as Carmilla has Hector, he will keep forging soldiers for her and her ambition will grow. When your father grew complacent, he lost your mother.”

Isaac took a breath as if contemplating whether he should continue. If Trevor were in his shoes, seeing how Alucard’s lip curled up to show more of his fangs, he would quit while he was ahead. But Isaac didn’t ask for Trevor’s opinion.

“And since it appears that the two of you share a _closer attachment_ than I originally presumed...”

Alucard had heard enough. Isaac was unable to finish his sentence because in an instant Alucard had his hand around the man’s throat and he lifted him up off his feet.

Alucard marched to the door with Isaac gasping and grabbing at his wrist trying to free himself. When they were at the threshold, he pulled his father’s former soldier in so he could issue one last order.

 _“Get out.”_ He growled. “And do not dare return.”

At that, Alucard tossed him outside, turned on his heel and waved his hand, causing the giant doors to slam shut behind him.

The two of them stood there then, alone, still hung-over, and somewhat at a loss. Trevor wasn’t really sure what to say about anything that had just happened. Alucard was staring at the floor as inscrutable as ever.

Trevor was certain things should be said. At the very least, they should discuss the power hungry vampires out to take over the world. He was also fairly certain that some _other_ _things_ needed to be discussed. Or explained. Or denied. Or maybe admitted to. ‘Transparency’ and all that. But he’d be damned if he was going to be the first to speak since there was nothing about anything that just happened that he could even remotely explain. And he certainly wasn’t going to be the one to admit to anything.

So they stood, silent and awkward, until Alucard gave in and spoke.

“Will you spar with me, Belmont?”

 _“Spar with you?”_ Trevor wasn’t expecting that request. He waved his hand at the shut castle doors which Isaac was presumably walking away from if he knew what was good for him. “That wasn’t enough excitement for a morning?”

“Humor me. Please?”

“I, uh…”

Alucard waited expectantly.

Trevor sighed. _He did ask nicely._ “Uhh..yeah, okay.”

Alucard nodded his head in thanks. Trevor picked up his sword and Alucard led him through the halls yet again. He realized he was starting to recognize some of the passages now and it made him feel a little less lost and a little more comfortable walking through the place. Along the way they stopped in a pantry-type-room where Alucard found them some breakfast in the form of cold water that ran from a tap at the pull of a lever and a box of crumbly biscuits that were filling but not heavy and tasted like almonds. Alucard even ate one himself.

Trevor _hated_ that he could get used to this. He knew better than to get used to anything nice. Nice things always had a way of dying, burning or disappearing. But he could _easily_ get used to this. Places to rest without paying. Food without struggling. Wine without effort. Breakfast without asking and water pouring cold and clean from a fucking wall. It was no wonder every demon this side of hell wanted Dracula’s castle for their own. It was _nice._

After breakfast, Alucard brought him to a large training hall. There were woven mats on the floor and the walls were lined with weapons. Some rested on racks or shelves, some were hung from the walls. It was as impressive a collection in its own right as the wine cellar. And it spoke to Trevor’s growing comfort level that he didn’t bat an eyelash at the fact that there was old blood on some of the blades.

Alucard removed his shirt and kicked off his boots, leaving them by the door. Trevor followed suit and did the same.

“I would ask that you not use your Morning Star. While I don’t want you to hold back, that weapon could seriously injure me and I’m sure neither of us wants you to have to carry me to bed a second night in a row.”

Obviously Trevor would not have used his whip on Alucard and he was a bit offended he thought he might try but he said nothing. He set it down next to his boots and tunic along with his other weapons. They all had some special enchantment, blessing or magic attached to them that he found himself loathe to accidentally expose Alucard to even if the Morning Star was the only one that might actually cause him harm.

Trevor took a moment to browse his options and then he selected a steel broadsword with a long hilt. As he took a few swings to test its weight and balance, he noticed Alucard raising an eyebrow at him.

“That is a larger sword than I’ve ever seen you use.” He commented.

“I’m perfectly capable of handling a big sword.” After he died inside a little from having actually said that, he added, “They’re just hard to travel with and impossible to conceal. Not ideal when you’re... _me.”_

Alucard held out his hand and from across the room a broadsword of equal size and weight to the one Trevor had chosen flung itself right into his waiting fingers. Alucard wasted no time and attacked with an insufferable smirk on his face.

Trevor earned his own smirk when he was able to duck, turn and knock the other man back with a two-handed swing from below.

“It’s good to know you are capable of handling a big sword, Belmont.” Alucard deliberately provoked him as he phased out of sight, only to re-materialize at Trevor’s left flank. Trevor was ready for him and their blades met with such force that sparks flew from the metal.

“I saw you coming, you sneaky prick.” Trevor pushed back with two hands against Alucard’s one.

“Are we still talking about our swords?” Alucard asked from behind the scraping crossed steel.

Trevor had to laugh. _This was a good idea,_ he decided. Trading sword swipes and barbs was making him feel better.

Alucard withdrew, regrouped, and forced Trevor backwards with a quick flurry of attacks. Trevor had to concentrate to counter each one. He focused on the flex of Alucard's fingers on the grip of his sword when he moved to redirect his swing. He was careful to notice the stretch of sinew and the shift of his stance when he changed his steps. With each lunge the man’s body spoke to him. Alucard tried to pull his shifting stunt again, this time appearing at Trevor’s right. Trevor was ready to block him.

“I believe you actually _can_ see me coming.” Alucard said as they continued to trade parry and riposte. “How?”

“Your eyes.” Trevor panted out. He switched hands and tried to attack from Alucard’s weak side. If he had a weak side. He probably didn’t. “They turn red right before you disappear and I can see them glow where you’re going to re-appear before the rest of your body shows up.”

Obviously, Alucard didn’t have a weak side so he blocked Trevor’s blow and shoved him back, pausing before attacking again. “That is amazingly observant of you, Belmont. Or is it that you simply like looking at my eyes?”

At the risk of being scolded for turning this into a bar fight, Trevor dropped his sword and punched Alucard right in his smart mouth.

Alucard’s head turned to the side with the impact. A trickle of blood emerged from a split in his bottom lip. Alucard dropped his own sword, and touched the cut, collecting blood on his thumb. He chuckled then, and smiled. With one pass of his tongue he licked the blood away from his lip, then he licked off what was left on his thumb.

“I think I’m beginning to enjoy being hurt by you, Belmont.”

“Then you’ll love this, you smug bastard…” Trevor went to punch him again with a jab to the nose but Alucard dodged and landed his own punch right to Trevor’s gut.

Trevor doubled over but he recovered quickly. The hit was half-assed. If Alucard had really wanted to punch him in the gut, he’d be spitting blood right now. Feigning continued incapacitation, he let Alucard leisurely move to retrieve his sword, then he took the opportunity to go low and swing his leg out to sweep Alucard’s legs out from under him. The move caught him by surprise and he fell right down like a tree in the woods. It was Trevor’s turn to laugh and he rose, looking down at Alucard.

“You shouldn’t be that trusting.” He said and he held out his hand to help the other man up. “Maybe Isaac had a point.”

Alucard took his hand, but continued to hold onto it once he was standing. The laugher in his face was gone. Trevor tried to pull away but Alucard held onto his hand tighter, staring down at their flexed forearms.

As it seemed they’d moved from swordplay to grappling, Trevor tried to push Alucard down to the floor by leaning in to their clasped hands and shoving his shoulder against the man’s chest.

It was like trying to take down a brick fucking wall. Trevor grunted as he practically bounced off Alucard’s pectorals.

“And which of Isaac’s points are you talking about, Belmont?” Alucard asked and then he pulled Trevor in, lifted him straight up in the air and tossed him over his shoulder. Trevor cried out in shock as his feet flipped over his head and he grunted again when he landed flat on his back on the mats.

Alucard turned and lowered to crouch beside him. Trevor was breathing heavy and sweating. Alucard was the picture of repose. In his deep monotone, that Trevor almost felt like he could here inside his head, he asked again.

“There are many things about what just transpired with Isaac that you could be referring to. Which is it, Belmont?”

Trevor stared at the ceiling and at the weapons along the walls. He stared at his boots next to Alucard’s by the door and he stared at the scar across Alucard’s chest. He stared everywhere he could to avoid looking into the man’s gold eyes. He propped himself up on his elbows, still finding everywhere else to look but those eyes.

But if they were going to talk, then it was time to talk.

“Look,” Trevor said, “it’s only a matter of time before some other vampire fancies themselves a contender and comes for you here. It might be that Carmilla bitch he talked about, or it could be someone else. Either way, he’s right. You’ve got a target on you.”

Alucard grabbed his chin then, between his thumb and forefinger. He tilted Trevor’s head up, forcing their eyes to meet.

“And will you protect me, Belmont? You seemed to want to do so.”

Trevor tried to look away but Alucard kept hold of his chin and those damn eyes were impossible to ignore now. Rather than answer, though, he turned the tables. “It didn’t seem like you would mind if I stayed here to protect you when you told Isaac to leave ‘us’ alone.”

Alucard let go of his chin but kept to his own line of questioning. “You were unreasonably preoccupied by my well-being. Were you even aware of how recklessly you were behaving?”

Trevor was getting angry now. He’d never had to answer to anyone, not for good decisions or bad ones.

“Are you my fucking keeper just because I drank your fucking blood? I thought Isaac was the one who tried to kill me. So I tried to kill him. It had nothing to do with you.”

 _Why am I getting so defensive?_ Trevor asked himself. The terrifying answer popped into his head immediately. _Because that’s a lie. It’s a goddamned lie and you know it._

Trevor held his tongue and let the lie stand. Of course, Alucard did _not_ let it stand.

“It had nothing to do with me? And yet you said you wouldn’t let him touch _me_. Not you. Me. Why?”

Trevor felt cornered. He felt cornered by this conversation and he felt physically cornered by Alucard crouching over him, his body heat invading his space, the soft tips of his long hair grazing his abdomen, his eyes pinning him down.

Trevor pushed himself off the mats and stood. Alucard remained on one knee but looked up at him, not letting him escape his line of sight. “Why the fuck does it matter why I said it? Why do you care why I said it? I just...I just said it, I don’t fucking know why!”

Alucard finally looked away and he spoke less insistently, more to himself than to Trevor. “It matters because I can no longer tell which motivations are mine and which are yours. Are you influencing me, or am I influencing you?”

Alucard stood then and made another demand that Trevor didn’t want to hear.

“Tell me what you dreamt of last night, Belmont.”

That was all it took for the dream to crash right back into his consciousness. He could almost feel Alucard’s body, soft warmth and hard planes, against his. Lips and teeth at his throat, smooth, scarless skin and tight muscle beneath his fingers, the intoxicating scent of his hair and the intimate whisper of tender words in his ear. Trevor couldn’t stop his heart from beating faster and he couldn’t stop his body from tensing tight as a bowstring.

Alucard pressed him further. “You can spout innuendo with every waking breath you take but you can’t tell me about a _dream?”_

Trevor balled his hands into fists. _“I don’t have to tell you anything.”_

Alucard mirrored Trevor’s actions and now there were four clenched fists, two racing heartbeats and one unspoken, _unbelievable,_ realization hanging in the air between them.

“No. You don’t have to tell me anything, and I don’t need you to. We shared a dream. I already know that. But was it yours or mine? I don’t know where it started, or who started it. I do know how it ended. It ended with me biting you. I was all over you, and you let it happen. _Do you want me, Belmont?”_

But Trevor was already walking away. He left his boots, his weapons, Alucard and Alucard’s question there in the training hall.

What he couldn’t leave there were his feelings for the man that he could no longer deny.


	7. Heart’s Desire

Even if Adrian had wanted to follow him, his feet wouldn’t move. He stood there, immobile, rocked and stunned, as if waiting for the aftershocks of an earthquake. He hadn’t meant to ask that question at all, let alone throw it at the man’s back as he walked away.

But this was the way of it with them. Every time he was in Belmont’s presence, even before he’d shared his blood, inexplicable things came out of his mouth, thoughtlessly, carelessly. His common sense fled, his tongue betrayed him and his body acted on its own. Any dignity or composure he thought he possessed turned out to be a farce in the face of _Trevor Fucking Belmont._

A Belmont was pulling his strings. A Belmont was spinning his world on end. A Belmont was stirring his hunger... _and his desire._

He couldn’t deny it now. He wasn’t that stupid. A drunken impulse to drink the man’s blood was one thing but this was clearly something different. Something more. And now that he was able to finally put a name to why Trevor Belmont was fast filling every space in his head to the exclusion of all logic and reason, he couldn’t escape from this _feeling._

He desired him. _He wanted him._

Adrian sat down on the floor and hung his head in his hands. Now that he was here, in this place he never expected to be, he wondered what the catalyst had been.

Was it only the dream? Recalling it now was hardly productive, but the memory of it was right there, waiting for him. He closed his eyes and remembered.

_Trevor’s hot blood beckoning him, his hot breath against his hair, a hand on his shoulder, holding on tight, weapons and defenses forgotten, inviting him closer._

Adrian’s head spun anew, lost in the fantasy.

_The imagined taste of Trevor on his tongue, the smell of him, the feel of him. This unique human who should want to hunt him but instead welcomed him in. This strange paragon, with wild lines, rough edges and fierce resistance that yielded only for him, all for him, all for Adrian. This Trevor no one else saw or knew, laid bare and saying ‘yes, please, yes…’_

In that dream, Adrian had everything he needed and everything he wanted. The whole world was in his hands because, in that dream, Trevor was his whole world. It was _fucking_ inconceivable but it was also so _fucking_ true he could scream. And it was all his own damn fault.

He shook his head and pushed the dream away from his immediate thoughts. It was harder to push away the now inescapable _need_ and the maddening _want._

After the uncomfortable encounter with Isaac, Adrian had thought sparring would put Belmont more at ease, more willing to talk things through like adults. It was a bad decision. All it did was agitate them both even further and bring into sharp focus for Adrian everything about Belmont he reluctantly respected but tried to bury under his own false superiority.

Belmont was quick, smart, and could match him step for step, blow for blow, even insult for insult. He would push and fight and _thrive_ no matter the circumstances. Belmont’s way of doing things would certainly never be his way, but that didn’t mean it was the wrong way.

Once upon a time, Lisa from Lupu probably shouldn’t have knocked on Dracula’s door, chastised him for being inhospitable and then demanded he teach her all his secrets. But there was no denying it worked.

 _...Dear fucking hellfire. Am I really likening_ Belmont _to my_ mother?

He sighed and rubbed at the headache in his temples. Speaking of nonsensical human behavior, Belmont fighting Isaac as if Adrian’s continued existence depended on it fell squarely in that category. But that whole debacle as well turned out to be just another seal slapped on Adrian’s fate.  

_He wanted to protect me. With all the strength in his body and all the determination in his soul, he thought he was protecting me._

Despite his flimsy denials, despite any influence Adrian’s blood may have had on him, there had been other times, countless times, that showed Belmont’s hidden, decent, core. He _gave_. He gave selflessly and completely, when he had nothing but himself to give.

The man had legitimately tried to kill him once when he thought he was fighting Dracula, and had been willing to destroy his own life to see it done because he’d thought he’d be helping the human race. The same human race that had shunned him and beaten him down at every turn. But then, just as quickly as he’d made the decision to sacrifice himself, he’d agreed to help Dracula’s dhampir son, still in an effort to serve his family’s mission.

Belmont’s ancestors would have hunted Adrian down the same as they had his father. They would have flayed the flesh from his bones and hung his desecrated skeleton up in tribute to the god who’d abandoned them in the end.

Instead of hunting him, Belmont had helped him and then had given of himself again, offering Adrian stewardship over his own inheritance. He’d been ready to sleep forever after his father’s death, the last tie he had to the world severed by his own hand. There was no reason to live any longer and nothing to bind him to the Earth until Belmont made him swear to live and watch over their shared legacy.

Belmont’s instinct to guard, protect, and give, shamed Adrian down to his marrow. He hated that he felt small in comparison, the flicker of a candle against a roaring hearthfire, and he realized it made him want to do more, _be_ more. Absurdly, watching Belmont stumble, sway and sometimes barrel through life, made Adrian want to _live_. He felt alive in Belmont’s presence. He felt frustratingly, glaringly, messily alive.

How was it possible that Trevor Belmont was now the last thing that made him feel human? That made him feel anything at all?

They were questions without answers. Or perhaps questions he feared the answers to.

With more effort than it should have required, Adrian rose and walked over to his shirt and boots. Instead of retrieving his own things, however, he stopped in front of Belmont’s. In a completely selfish invasion of the man’s privacy, Adrian bent to touch the Morning Star.

The metal was unnaturally warm and it vibrated dissonantly against his fingertips. Did Belmont hear it’s song differently? Was there a proper melody, only for its master, something in his family’s blood that sang in harmony with it? Belmont could deny being a black magician all he wanted but when he used this weapon the dark power he wielded said otherwise. Let the church have its saints and its dead savior. If Adrian had to choose, he would say that Belmont and his whip served the world better. And just knowing that, recognizing that _fucking beautiful_ spark of perfection deep inside the most vexing person he’d ever met, paradoxically, made Adrian want him even more.

He straightened and left the whip behind along with all their other personal effects lined up together on the mats.

Adrian roamed through the castle halls, effectively lost in his own home, his thoughts no longer his own, consumed as they were by Belmont. The keep was silent as he wandered for what seemed like hours and the pervasive emptiness of the place added to the weight he felt on his shoulders.

Had Belmont collected his things and gone? Was he wandering lost within these walls as well?

Eventually Adrian found himself in his father’s study. It was cold and dark, but he had no desire to start a fire. The mirror shards were still piled on the floor. His mother’s portrait was propped up on the desk. He sat down in his father’s large chair. The longer he sat there, staring at the grey ashes in the fireplace, the broken mirror and his mother’s picture, the more he realized that Isaac was right.

He was his father’s son.

He dared not admit it to himself before this, because it seemed like a betrayal to his mother, but there was a secret, traitorous part of him that had thought his father flawed for surrendering his detachment and grounding himself in the world. Yes, Adrian only existed because he’d done so, but still, it was what drove the man mad in the end. Vlad had endured for centuries as all else around him faded and turned to dust. He’d been the solitary keeper of the collected knowledge of the ages. There might have come a time in a distant future where he could have shared that knowledge freely with the world without Lisa trying to bring him down to the level of petty humans to do so. Perhaps he would have done better to endure the void of his own immortality alone, as he had done before he met Adrian’s mother, waiting, set apart from the turmoil that always followed humanity. To not care so much about any one thing or any one person. To not _feel_ so acutely.

There _was_ a part of Adrian that had once felt that way. And now look at him.

Adrian stood, suddenly unsettled. He paced back and forth, wanting to crawl out of his own skin. _Fucking hell,_ he’d just fed, and yet thirst clawed at the back of his throat as if he’d not tasted blood in forever. He stretched his limbs, rolled his neck and kept pacing. He couldn’t stop thinking about... _everything._ About this fucking empty castle and its haunted memories, about the aisles in the Belmont archives haunted by the spirits of the damned, about Trevor Belmont himself and how the man had so quickly come to haunt every fucking second of his days.

Adrian stopped pacing when his bare foot accidentally kicked a piece of broken mirror. He looked down at the now blood-stained glass. He saw his own face reflected back at him but the man he saw was a stranger, some crazed wild-eyed image of Adrian Tepes laid low by uncontrollable desire.

He lifted his hand and the mirror assembled itself. It hung there before him, and he stared at the doppelganger that looked back. The longer he stared though, the less he questioned. And the more he wanted to see someone else there, in front of him.

_I can’t. I shouldn’t. Don’t, Adrian. Don’t..._

Adrian reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. He whispered his command with full awareness of how horribly wrong this action was. But he did it anyway.

“Show me Trevor Belmont.”

~

The floor beneath Trevor’s bare feet was cold. The air of the castle was cold without his shirt and his hands felt cold without the hilt of a weapon to rest them on. It suited him just fine. He needed to cool down the heated emotion that had come over him.

He was the biggest damned fool in the history of House Belmont. Of course he couldn’t answer Alucard’s fucking question. The answer was unthinkable, irrational, impossible.

And yet it made him want the man no less.

If it was Alucard’s blood that caused it, then so be it. What did it matter now? He felt it. It was _there._ An unspeakable desire that made every muscle in his body ache with craving.

_Why did he have to ask that fucking question?_

Why did he have to ask when they were sparring? When Trevor felt _good_. When he was _sober_. When he was relaxed and his defenses were down. When he wasn’t prepared to come back at him with something, anything. When he couldn’t make excuses.

There was no excuse for walking away. He felt like a fucking coward for having done it but, he’d warned Alucard long before there was _this_ between them, that everyone regrets trusting him in the end. Being a hopeless disappointment in life had never felt quite this crushing though.

Trevor continued to prowl the deserted keep half naked for hours with no destination in mind. He even passed by the wine cellar again. _Passed by._ The mere thought of drinking was like ash in his mouth. And he found himself not wanting to hurt Alucard anymore than he already had, whether the man perversely said he liked it or not.

Even drinking and bothering Alucard were ruined for him now. If he had a weapon, he would have cut his own fucking heart out for screwing him over like this.

It was evening by the time he’d walked off the heat in his blood, and found himself barefoot, shirtless, unarmed and cold in some random corner of Dracula’s castle.

_Shit. Now what?_

Well, at the very least, he wanted to get warm.

_So go find Alucard..._

He ignored that thought and kept walking. At the end of the corridor he was in, he noticed the stone of the floor was actually warm. He padded along, following the heat with his feet and eventually came to a huge vaulted chamber that held a steaming pool of water. The place was as large as a public bath house and smelled of chamomile and fennel.

 _This fucking castle..._ Trevor lamented that he was fast finding the magic of this place irresistible. But that didn’t stop him from stripping and jumping in. And _god almighty_ was it ever good.

Trevor sat there, chin deep, in hot, scented water. He let the bath soothe his tense muscles and he let the steam clear his foggy head so he could consider his next actions. But by the time his fingers and toes had wrinkled, he still had no fucking idea what to do next.

All he knew was that this bath was wonderful. It was no wonder Alucard’s mother stuck around here as long as she had. Having to fuck Dracula seemed like a small price to pay for all this.

 _Oh god._ Trevor felt _immediately_ horrible for even thinking such a fucking awful thing. He was a fucking awful person. No wonder everyone thought he was an asshole and no wonder Alucard thought he was infuriating. He’d honestly been raised better than that but it was so easy to forget when there was no one around to hold him accountable.

When all he had was himself and his own thoughts, life was easier… _wasn’t it?_

When he was with Sypha and her group everything was noisy and every one was too close. His solitude may have been forced when he was younger but now he enjoyed the quiet and simplicity. Sure, it was lonely sometimes, but life isn’t perfect, so he just lived with it when he felt that way and moved the fuck on. He could never see himself settling down in a group like that with so many voices and so many personalities to navigate.

He had to admit, though, this brief time alone with Alucard was different. As much as they complained to and about each other, it was really easy being around him. He honestly didn’t worry about what the man thought of him. They both had pasts. They both had some pretty fucking heavy baggage from their pasts in fact, being who they were, and it just was what it was. Going back and forth with Alucard wasn’t work in the way it was with other people. Maybe the stuck-up bastard thought being around him was exhausting, _because he’d outright said as much,_ but Trevor felt the opposite. He let Trevor be himself and even though he called him out for all the bad shit he did and the shit person he was, he didn’t really judge him for it.

Trevor had been on the receiving end of the judging looks, disapproving glares, outright disgust and fear of people for years. Anytime he got close enough to anyone for them to know who and what he was, it was like a license for them to judge him for it. After so much of it, it was just easier to avoid people altogether.

Alucard may look at him with vague distaste for his personal hygiene and bad manners, but he didn’t look at him with fear or judgement.

_Until now maybe._

Trevor groaned in frustration. He dunked his head under and watched the exhaled bubbles float to the surface. When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer he surfaced and got out to sit at the edge of the pool, letting his feet dangle in the water.

If only he’d stayed in that training hall. If only he’d turned the fuck around and answered the question. So fucking what if he wanted to fuck the man? He was goddamned beautiful. And he was right. He was right about every goddamned thing in that fucking dream. Alucard was all over him in that shared fantasy and Trevor let it happen. _He wanted it to happen._ It felt _so fucking good_ when it happened. Being close to someone and not holding back. Touching someone and feeling safe. Knowing that Alucard wanted it too. Knowing he _needed_ it as much as Trevor did.

In that dream, they obviously both wanted it. So why was it so fucking hard to admit it? There was something there. Something more than the desires of flesh.

_If all you love is the flesh of someone, then you have no idea what love is._

Alucard had said that to him, hadn’t he?

Trevor laid back on the heated stones, pulled his legs out of the water and stared up at the beams of the ceiling. When his lids started getting heavy with exhaustion, he closed his eyes and continued to enjoy the comforting humidity in the room. He felt like he could fall asleep right where he was, and he would have if not for all the unanswerable questions that kept repeating themselves in his head, keeping him awake.

Was it dangerous to fall asleep? What if they shared a dream again? Would it be the same desire-fueled drama that got him here? And what in the world was Alucard doing right now anyway? Did he dare intrude on whatever it was by falling asleep and awakening their bond?

 _Christ,_ he could almost still feel the man’s eyes on him, warm and gold and intense enough to seem like a real touch. For the life of him, Trevor could not recall when he’d had as much physical contact with anyone as he’d had with Alucard in just these past days.

Trevor rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He needed to stop thinking about all this but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about how good it was to let his guard down for a time in the presence of someone who was as fucked up as him. He couldn’t ignore how good it felt to touch and be touched by someone who wasn’t scared of him.

And just like that, he could feel Alucard’s fingers tangling in his hair again and his own fingers itched to reach out and do the same. Trevor was drained and tired but nowhere close to relaxed. All things considered, this was not the best situation for him to be in to make good decisions.

 _What harm could it do?_ He thought, knowingly deceiving himself.

What harm could it do, here, alone, awake, with only his own private thoughts? He could give in just a little, clear his head, find some fucking release and then find somewhere to sleep, come what dreams may. He could figure out the rest in the morning.

The bad decision practically made itself.

Trevor closed his eyes, slowly now, as if drawing a curtain. He took a deep breath, in and out. And then he thought of Adrian.

He changed the fantasy this time, to suit him. Adrian’s gold eyes were looking up and Trevor had his long hair gathered in one of his hands, twisted around his fist so he could pull just a little. Parted lips were waiting for him, the tips of deadly fangs exposed, _and Trevor didn’t care at all._

He lowered his neck down and let Adrian lick a path up the midline of his throat, sharp teeth grazing along the way.

_Oh, fucking hell, Trevor, don’t do this. You shouldn’t do this._

But there was no going back now. He was painfully aroused _._ Just the thought of Adrian beneath him like that was enough to make his heart pound out of his chest.

What would it feel like if he ran his hand up the back of the man’s thigh? The weight of his long leg resting in his grasp, the hard muscles there flexing against his palm…

Trevor couldn’t hold back anymore and he took his own hard length in his hand.

~

If there was indeed a Christian god in the heavens, then Adrian was certain there was now a level of hell reserved solely for him.

He knelt on the carpet of the study in front of the mirror. _On his knees, he was._ Brought to his fucking knees by the sight of Belmont in the baths.

He watched every riveting second of it. He watched Belmont strip naked. He watched him unselfconsciously bathe. He watched him lay back on the stone to dry, steam hanging seductively around his form, water running down his tanned skin, caressing each hard-won scar in turn.

Adrian was sweating, trembling.

This was _too much,_ too much of Belmont, uninhibited, exposed, _stunning._ He couldn’t keep watching this and maintain his composure. He couldn’t keep watching this and expect the man to continue to be safe in his presence any longer, _ever._

And then suddenly something about Belmont’s relaxed demeanor changed. _He was getting aroused._ Openly, shamelessly, aroused. It was mere seconds, _fucking seconds,_ for Adrian’s own cock to respond at the sight of it.

Adrian gripped the sides of the mirror, its jagged edges cutting into his hands. He pleaded with himself, begged all the gods he didn’t believe in to help him hold on to some thread of decency and look away.

But it was hopeless. He watched, eyes unblinking, greedily, hungrily as Trevor tilted his head up. Adrian matched the tempo of the man’s breathing as it visibly quickened. When Trevor’s back arched ever so slightly, his pelvis thrusting forward, his erection bobbing lewdly, Adrian bit his bottom lip until it bled.

Blood ran down his chin and it ran down his wrists from the mirror’s lacerations. He didn’t care. Someone could have opened all his veins in that moment and he would have exsanguinated on the carpet, still entranced by what he was witnessing. Trevor’s limbs were still but for his fist that had come to wrap around his stiff cock. Adrian could have wept at the raw beauty of it, the man’s lips parted in ecstacy, hips thrusting up into his hand, knees bent and feet planted on the stone for leverage.

When Trevor moaned his name, _he heard it._ Adrian heard his own name inside his own head.

No mirror could have transmitted that sound. No spell or curse could have made him hear that fucking sound but the curse he’d brought upon himself.

With his own anguished cry, Adrian finally tore himself away. He scattered the shards of the mirror across the room with force enough to embed glass into the walls and he got off his knees. He left the study bloody, hard, tortured and _utterly shaken._

~

Trevor yelled so loud it echoed. He was right there at the precipice, so close, his orgasm just starting to creep in at the corners of his vision. And then he shouted Adrian’s name.

To hear it, _actually hear it,_ in his own voice made him stop cold. He released his now desperate cock and sat up, breathless and _utterly shaken._

 _What are you doing, you fucking_ fool _?!_

Well, he didn’t know what the fuck he’d just been doing, but he knew, with absolute fucking certainty, what he was going to do now.

~

Adrian didn’t know how his legs managed to carry him to his bedroom. He just knew he had to get there. _He had to fucking force himself to go straight to his bedroom,_ thirst and hunger and desire be damned. It was the only safe place for him.

But he should have known there was no safe place in a world where Trevor Belmont existed.

Belmont was already there, right outside the door. He’d been leaning against it, fists clenched at his sides, still barefoot and half naked. Adrian almost fell to his knees a second time when Belmont noticed him, straightened, and turned to face him, the contours of his unsatisfied erection obvious through his trousers.

When Belmont spoke, his tone was so rough and deep it was barely audible, but what did it matter if Adrian’s ears picked up the sound when he could hear the man’s voice in his head?

“You have one chance to tell me to leave, Alucard. _Just one. Right now._ ”

 _This is how the mighty fall,_ Adrian thought as he stood there, _silent_ , letting his offered chance pass.

By the time Trevor finally kissed him, he was all too eager to embrace annihilation.


	8. Love's Name

_He’s not stopping me._

Trevor wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Adrian in his arms right now, _-and when exactly did he start thinking of him as ‘Adrian’ anyway?-_ not only not stopping him, but kissing him back with ravenous abandon. He hadn’t planned past giving that ultimatum and it was fast becoming impossible for him to plan anything at all besides acting on the shared primal needs that were breaking down both their walls.

One of those needs was to be _closer_ , hold him tighter and dive deeper into whatever this was. Wild lust? Blood driven frenzy? Something...else?

Trevor brought his hands up under the angles of Adrian’s jaw so he could tilt his head just the way he wanted, opening his mouth a little more to sweep across the other man’s tongue with his own. All of which Adrian accepted with a wanton groan.

 _And oh the fucking sound of it…_ the feeling of it vibrating against his lips as he swallowed it up, unwilling to let either of them part long enough to draw breath. _God above,_ Trevor would do anything to hear that sound over and over again and know that he was the one that coaxed it out. _And he planned to do everything he could to make that sound happen over and over again._

His cock didn’t care one damn bit if he was trapped in some fucked up vampire enthrallment. And he was long past the point where any part of him but his cock was thinking. He probably crossed that line when he started jerking himself off in the bath, or when he called out Adrian’s name as he was about to come, but if not those times, then he definitely crossed that line, laughed at it, kicked dirt over it, and then spit on it when Adrian reached his hands around to cup his buttocks and pulled him closer so their still-clothed erections slid together.

There was no going back after that.

Trevor rutted himself against Adrian’s pelvis like he was a beast in heat and it earned him another _fucking_ _delicious_ , helpless groan. They were both helpless against this, this all consuming force of nature that demanded they couple.

Trevor convinced himself to break away briefly so he could turn them around and make for the bedroom. He managed to get them to the door but before he opened it, he had to pause for a breath even though he tried to tell his lungs he needed to fuck Adrian right now more than he needed air.

They both inhaled sharply. Trevor dared not look into the man’s eyes yet lest he come right there in his trousers so he let his gaze fall on Adrian’s lips, swollen and red against his pale skin from Trevor’s assault. The thoroughly debauched look of them wasn’t any less arousing than the man’s eyes unfortunately, but it made him notice that there were traces of blood on Adrian’s chin and down his neck. He stepped back and saw there was blood on his hands and wrists as well.

Trevor grabbed Adrian’s face to inspect it further. _“Shit,_ is this your blood? Are you alright? Did something happen?”

Adrian turned away and brought one hand up to cover his mouth. “I...no, I’m fine…” He closed his eyes and swore. _“Fuck..._ I...Trevor…”

_Looks like kissing and rubbing our dicks together means we’re both on a first name basis now._

Trevor didn’t comment on that though, he just listened and watched Adrian flush from the tops of his cheeks all the way down to his collarbones.

“I have a confession I must make...before we go any further.”

Of course he’d want to _talk_ first _._ Talking was the last thing they needed to be doing, in Trevor’s opinion, but Adrian sounded determined so the best he could do was try and obtain some assurances before hand. “Okay, fine, but we are going to _go further_ though right? Unless you plan on confessing you’re actually satan, and even then, _holy shit,_ I think I still need to fuck you.”

 _Shit._ He hadn’t meant for that to sound so desperate, but what the hell else was he supposed to say?

Adrian didn’t specifically answer his question, he just proceeded with his confession while he kept his eyes downcast and his hand in front of his mouth. “The bleeding was self-inflicted when I…” Adrian swallowed hard and Trevor had to stop himself from dipping his head to suck at his shifting Adam’s apple. “...when I _watched_ you. From the distance mirror, in the study. I watched you in the baths...pleasuring yourself, and I heard you call out my name.”

When Trevor said nothing, Adrian finally looked up at him with strange emotions peering out from behind his eyes that he’d never seen there before. Emotions like worry, remorse, and sadness. It made him look _vulnerable._ Trevor never could have imagined it, but it was right there in front of him, in gold-hued reality. The mighty Alucard, son of Vlad Tepes, wracked with guilt, vulnerable in Trevor’s hands...and trusting him enough to be so.

~

“I’m sorry.” Adrian offered, though he knew it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t read Trevor’s face, though, to even try to guess at what more he should offer in contrition.

_Is he ‘Trevor’ to me now? And not just another bearer of the Belmont name?_

Adrian shook off the ill-timed introspection and continued. “It was an unconscionable action. And I…”

He had no idea what he’d planned to say next but he was absolved from having to speak another word when Trevor pushed him back against the door, turning the tables from the previous night, and penned him in. Adrian was shocked into more speechlessness when Trevor closed the scant distance between them to inflict one languid lick of his tongue across the blood on his chin. He then picked up one of Adrian’s wrists and gave it the same treatment. Adrian bit the insides of his cheeks so hard he drew blood again trying not to let out the moan that wanted to erupt from his chest at the sight of Trevor taking his blood, this time of his own volition, without coercion or threat of death.

He only just managed to remain silent but he was panting by the time Trevor dropped his wrist and they were face to face again. Adrian looked into the man’s blue eyes, now gone dark. Those lust-dilated pupils pinned him down more mercilessly than any stake could. He was unable to look away and he had no idea what to expect next, _he never knew what to expect next from this man,_ so he waited, heart pounding, ears ringing, stomach fluttering, cock _throbbing_.

“You’re a fucking arrogant asshole.” Trevor finally said as he curled his lip up, half in contempt, half in a smile. He crowded Adrian in until they were so close their hearts were beating right up against one another. Trevor’s mouth moved to his ear and he spoke against the sensitive shell. _“Did you like what you saw?”_

 _Of course._ Of fucking course he liked it and of fucking course, the smug bastard was going to torture him over it. And Adrian had no choice but to accept whatever punishment he was dealt. Because he was _fucking_ _hard_ as sin and he wanted to come so badly he would have done anything, so he grit his teeth and answered.

_"Yes.”_

Trevor took a step back, seemingly satisfied at Adrian’s curt honesty, if the wicked grin on his face was any indication, and he turned to lean casually against the door at Adrian’s side. He drew one finger lazily along his cheek and drew him into a crooked kiss. Adrian couldn’t tell if the tender gesture meant he was forgiven or if this was only the start of his penance. His fate became clear when Trevor ended the kiss and spoke into his ear again.

“I think you owe me, _Adrian_.”

 _Fuck_. Even though he’d seen this coming, Adrian closed his eyes and suppressed a shudder. The sound of his name in that rough voice did nothing but fan the flames.

“So why don’t you let _me_ watch _you_ now.”

Adrian was fast losing his control again but in a different way. Step by step he was surrendering it willingly. He couldn’t decide if it was what he really wanted or if he was sliding down a slope he couldn’t claw his way back up. Whichever it was, he still let his head fall back against the door and pulled his aching cock free of his trousers as bid.

He had to gasp when he wrapped his fingers around his own length, the shock of direct contact too much in the wake of his frayed senses. He squeezed himself so hard it hurt, but he had to do something to stop from spilling on the floor of the hallway when Trevor nibbled on his ear and offered the most infuriating, condescending, _arousing_ , encouragement.

 _“_ Just like that. _Jesus,_ that’s fucking perfect.” Trevor whispered.

In an effort to grab back some semblance of dominance, Adrian chuckled softly. “So you do think I’m Jesus then.”

The remark earned him nothing but a firm bite on his earlobe and this time he couldn’t hold back the shudder. He circled the base of his cock in a tight ring with his thumb and forefinger trying to hold off any further embarrassment. But Trevor wasn’t satisfied with just watching Adrian hold himself in a vice grip.

“Now, show me everything you saw me do.” Trevor ordered, but the next breath he exhaled had jagged edges and an added plea. _“Please, Adrian,_ let me watch you…” And then back to a command. “But don’t you _dare_ fucking come yet.”

~

Trevor could have just punched him in his arrogant fucking face for what he did, but this... _this_ revenge was so much sweeter.

He had to stop himself more than once from reaching out and taking over as Adrian drew his hand up and down his _fucking magnificent_ cock, slow tug by slow tug. Each time he passed his thumb over the slick tip Trevor clenched his fists so as not to interrupt. But less than a dozen strokes in, when Adrian paused to squeeze tightly at the base and growl out a curse of ‘ _fucking hell, Trevor, just let me come’,_ Trevor couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled Adrian’s hand away and moved to face him again.

He rubbed his clothed cock along Adrian’s naked one and the man growled again. Trevor kissed him, still dragging their cocks together as he spoke in broken, mumbled sentences against Adrian’s lips.

“Is this enough of a fucking answer to your question?” A lick, a nip, a swipe of tongue and a puff of breath. “I want you alright, Adrian? _I fucking want you._ ” Trevor stopped and stared him down. “Now fucking say you want me too.”

Adrian knew how to press his buttons. He wouldn’t give in so easily. He lifted his hands and ran his long fingers up the back of Trevor’s neck to grab up two fistfuls of his hair and then he yanked backwards to lay kisses on Trevor’s throat. Soft ones. Delicate ones. Horribly, annoyingly, soft and delicate compared to the exquisite forceful tug on his scalp. And then without a single _real_ kiss, Adrian pulled him back a step by his hair and forced his head down to look at his undone trousers and his disgracefully exposed cock.

 _“Is this enough of a fucking answer?”_ He echoed Trevor’s statement sounding simultaneously forlorn and pissed off.

Trevor shook his head to shake out of Adrian’s grip. He squared up and pressed one hand on Adrian’s chest, holding him against the door. He needed to be serious now. He needed to hear it. _He wanted to hear it._

“Say it then, you contrary prick. Fucking say it.”

_But what if he won’t? What if he doesn’t…?_

Trevor asked instead of demanded this time, softer, giving way, as he gazed into those fucking gold eyes that had seen far too much of him to let this go. “Say it... _Adrian_...say it…”

Adrian opened his mouth, hesitated only a fraction of a second and then he admitted, barely audible, but enough to count. “I want you, Trevor. _I want you.”_

Trevor relaxed and slid his hand down from Adrian’s chest to brush past his cock in a not-at-all satisfying way. He smiled and asked another question, pushing the envelope even more.

“ _How_ do you want me?”

When all he got was a searching wide eyed stare, like the immortal being in front of him with his dick out was a school boy caught being naughty and not the smartest most dangerous person Trevor knew, he grabbed Adrian’s hard on properly and started stroking.

 _“Fuck...”_ Adrian gasped, his wide eyes looking down now at Trevor’s hand moving along his cock.

But a breathy curse wasn’t the answer Trevor wanted so he worked him faster and taunted. “Come on...I’m sure you have some ideas…”

Giving in, Adrian snapped in frustration, _“I want you on your knees.”_

And at that, Trevor sunk to his knees pulling the tight leather of Adrian’s trousers the rest of the way down with him. He wasn’t done playing with fire yet though.

“Now what?” Trevor sat back on his heels, not even breathing on the needy prick right in front of his face.

Adrian bent his head down, his long hair framing a stricken expression. Trevor was learning to like seeing Adrian’s usually tightly guarded emotions showing plain as day on his face. It made him feel more on equal footing with the man. As did all these depraved admissions of what he secretly wanted. Adrian didn’t hesitate to answer this time. “I want your mouth on me.”

The only other thing Trevor wanted more than to get his mouth on him was to bury his dick inside him but he wasn’t in this for a quick tumble. He was in this to sate every single fucking one of the filthy desires that had taken over his very soul. There would be time enough to fuck the man into tomorrow after he made him come at least once with his mouth.

Trevor sat up, pressed Adrian’s hips to the door with his hands and then swallowed him down in one go.

And the sound of the moan he got... _dear god,_ the fucking sounds he made did things to Trevor that weren’t at all conducive to making this last. His own dick twitched in anticipation at that fucking gorgeous sound but he did his best to ignore it.

Instead, Trevor popped his mouth all the way off with a wet and vulgar suck and then dove back in all the way until his nose nuzzled Adrian’s coarse blond curls.

Trevor wondered for a moment how he must look, knelt at the feet of a fucking vampire, sucking on his cock, but he honestly didn’t care if every devil in hell sat in audience to this. He didn't care if all the angels in heaven aligned the stars against him from now until armageddon or if the pearly gates were forever closed to him. This was worth every damned minute he would one day suffer in purgatory, and then some.

Adrian’s cock was as fucking beautiful as the rest of him, long, thick and heavy against Trevor’s tongue as he slid it up the underside and then lapped at the slit. In any other circumstance he’d take his time to worship it properly but right now he was too worked up. He had to make him come.

He concentrated then and focused all his energy on every teasing lick and every deep swallow. He breathed heavily in and out through his nose, not letting up, not giving Adrian one second of relief from the onslaught. Soon, Adrian’s hands came to tangle in his hair again and he started pulling Trevor up and down on his ever stiffening length.

Trevor knew he was close when Adrian cursed and yanked him off entirely.

Breathless, he panted, “Stop, Trevor…”

He said it, but Trevor knew he couldn’t possibly have meant it, so near to claiming his release.

“You don’t have to…” He persisted.

Trevor rolled his eyes and circled his hand around Adrian’s painfully hard cock that was so desperate to come, it hurt just to look at it. “Do you think I can’t suck a dick properly? Just shut the fuck up and let me finish.”

Trevor gave him no choice and Adrian resisted no further. He fell back against the wall and let Trevor take over again, hands limp at his sides. After only a few more aggressive sucks, Trevor felt him stiffen against his lips and then, with a cry of release that was music to his ears, Adrian came in his mouth, succumbing completely to the bliss of it. Trevor swallowed down every drop until Adrian pulled away and fell to one knee on the floor beside him.

Trevor huffed to catch his breath and moved to wipe his mouth off on the back of his hand, but Adrian stopped him, grabbed his face and kissed him, eagerly tasting himself on Trevor’s tongue.

~

Adrian tasted himself on Trevor’s lovely, talented tongue. He could have stayed like that in the hallway forever, dizzy and sated and kissing this...this _human_ who contradicted everything he knew to be logical, everything he knew that made sense. Nothing in the world made sense to him anymore besides how _good_ holding this man in his hands felt.

“Bedroom.” Trevor directed between kisses. _“Now.”_

Adrian kicked off the trousers that were pooled at his ankles and the two of them stumbled their way through the door. They made it no further than the rug in front of the fire. Adrian leaned back on his elbows and Trevor crawled his way forward to loom over him. On his knees again, Trevor rested a hand on each of Adrian’s ankles, then he caressed over his calves, under his knees and along the backs of his thighs, pulling them apart as he slid his fingers teasingly upwards.

“I fantasized about this, you know.” He said, surprisingly relaxed given his raging untended erection still trying to tear through his trousers. “I imagined what it would feel like holding your legs in my hands.”

He bent down for a kiss, one hand now finally pulling his cock free and one hand still roaming up Adrian’s thigh. He kept talking.

“Since you were watching, I’m sure you’d like to know that it was about the time I started fucking my own hand that I imagined what it would feel like to fuck your tight ass.”

~

Trevor kept stroking himself with one hand but he removed his other hand from Adrian’s leg. As fucking good as it felt, as good as he knew it would feel to hold him open and exposed like that, he needed to do exactly what he admitted he imagined as quickly as possible now if he was going to make any sort of good impression.

He wasn’t sure if it was exactly permission to keep going but, when Adrian opened his mouth obediently to accept the two fingers he rested against his bottom lip, he decided it was enough. Adrian sucked on them diligently, slicking them up until his lips glistened with his own saliva. Trevor rewarded him with his second unobstructed view of the evening of him bringing himself off.

They were both slow and steady in their respective tasks, though now that Adrian had already come once, Trevor thought he was probably slightly more at ease, but when he noticed the man getting aroused again so quickly, it seemed they were again on equal, though fraught, footing.

Watching Adrian’s cock swell as he sucked on his fingers was its own sort of torture. Honestly, if he hadn’t already thrown down the offer of fucking him he might have loved to get his own dick sucked and then ride that cock until he came all over the man’s chest.

Next time, he promised himself, they’d do this the other way round.

_What? Next time? How the fuck am I already planning a ‘next time’? I haven’t even had a ‘this time’ yet._

Trevor had never had a ‘next time’ with anyone. ‘Next time’ was never a good idea and it had never been an option for him anyway. There was still a part of him that thought  _this time_ with Adrian wasn’t a good idea but it was too late to turn the ship around now.

_But is it possible this could turn into…_

He shook the thought out of his head before it even fully formed. He had the most captivating, most aggravating man he’d ever met naked and willing beneath him. He wanted to focus on _this_ and nothing else.

He pulled his fingers out of Adrians mouth, let go of his own cock and bent for another kiss. Adrian reached up to touch his face and guide him down to his lips but he suddenly stopped and recoiled. Trevor stopped too, wondering what happened but when he noticed Adrian focusing his gaze on the long scar over his left eye, cheek and forehead he covered it with his own hand and sat back.

Adrian tried to speak. “Trevor, I…”

Trevor didn’t let him finish. With one hand he gathered up both of Adrian’s wrists and pinned them above his head.

“You don’t need to touch me for this to work.” He said as he did it, but he regretted the bitter hint he heard in his own voice.

_God almighty, I just want him to touch me…_

_~_

More than anything Adrian wanted to touch him. All of him. Every part of him. Chiseled muscle, yielding flesh, imperfect scars and perfect smooth planes of skin. But touching his scars right now, especially one so impressive, seemed like a violation. A betrayal of all Trevor had trusted him with up to this point.

_So say that. Say it, you shrinking coward._

Adrian tried. He almost did, but Trevor stopped him and moved to prevent any more accidental invasions into his past.

Adrian closed his eyes and let it happen.

_~_

Adrian didn’t fight against being restrained. In fact, he closed his eyes, tilted his head back and went with it. When he arched the long line of his back to give Trevor more leverage to hold him down, it was possibly the most ravishing thing he’d ever seen in his life. How could he have gotten so fucking lucky as to have _this._ He couldn’t stop himself from running his free hand from the jut of Adrian’s hip, around to the small of his back and tracing the elegant arc of his spine.

Trevor kissed him then, still holding his wrists and roaming his other hand along the man’s flank, chest, abdomen and thigh.

 _This is bullshit,_ he thought to himself. And then, he dared to say it.

“Adrian…” He said his name as he kissed down his neck and along his sternum. “This is _bullshit._ I fucking want your hands all over me too. But right now... _fuck_ …”

_Fuck, he felt so good; fuck, he tasted so good; fuck, he had to have him...right now._

“Right now, leave your hands here and just let _me_ touch _you_...and...and I’ll fucking figure out the rest later...just... _god_...just let me fuck you...please…”

He’d broken down, he couldn’t think straight anymore, his tortured prick was begging him to sink deep inside this fucking perfect man splayed out and ready for him. He was going to fucking combust if he didn't have him _right fucking now._

~

Adrian didn’t speak his reply. He kept his hands above his head, even when Trevor let them go. He yielded to Trevor’s every touch, at his cheek, at his lips, at his navel, at his hips. At the back of his knees as he _pulled._ At his cock, hard and wanting once again, as he _stroked_.

And then slowly, but without hesitation he pushed with his fingers, still slick with Adrian’s saliva, _deep inside._

Adrian unabashedly called out Trevor’s name as the intimate pain and pressure grew and swelled into blinding pleasure as Trevor worked him, doggedly, deliberately, until Adrian was writhing in his grasp, his whole body on fire for him, his cock throbbing right in his hand for him, his voice crying out for him.

~

When Trevor finally, _finally_ , lined up his cock and sunk in all the way with one smooth motion, they both moaned at the pain and pleasure of it in unison.

“ _Oh god_ , Adrian, you’re so fucking tight…” Trevor grunted with effort as he pulled out then thrust back in, _and again, and again,_ while he kept pumping Adrian’s cock faster and faster.

“Come again for me, _please Adrian_ , come in my hand while I fuck you _…”_ He begged, his thrusts picking up pace as well, _harder, deeper._

Trevor dug his fingers into Adrian’s hip so hard as he pounded into him that he was sure any normal man would have bruises. But Adrian took everything he had and not only that but deemed him worthy to do exactly as he asked.

Adrian arched his back again forcing his cock up into Trevor’s hand one last time and taking Trevor’s cock even deeper as he did it. With a long, low moan he came a second time, right in Trevor’s hand, spilling himself messily between the two of them.

Trevor was ready, he was _so fucking ready._ He let go of Adrian’s cock and grabbed crudely at the flesh on the backs of Adrian’s spread thighs, pulling him apart even wider. He leaned forward with all his weight, not holding back, knowing Adrian could take it and shoved himself in and out and in and out. Sweat dripped from his brow, and he squeezed his eyes shut, not willing to actually _see_ anything anymore because it was all too much, too good, too fucking perfect, until a flash of white hot heat exploded in his head and his cock stiffened, his whole body shuddered and he spent himself in shattering, agonizing pulses that seemed to go on forever.

When his head finally started to clear and his body started to respond to commands again, all he could do was stop himself from collapsing, barely able to hold himself up still perched over Adrian.

He needn’t have bothered to try. Adrian shifted and Trevor’s softening length slipped out of his welcoming heat and into the comparatively cold air of the bedroom. He whimpered and tried to just fall over on his side on the floor but Adrian caught him. Adrian then shifted again to sitting, then to crouching and then he gathered Trevor up, with no effort at all, and carried him to the bed.

This time, Trevor didn’t mind being carried. He’d fucking earned it.


	9. Arm's Reach

Trevor dozed for long enough to start drooling on the pillow where Adrian deposited him but not long enough to start dreaming. He was almost curious to see what kind of dream they’d share now after what they’d just done but he roused from his brief post-coital nap when he felt eyes on him.

He mumbled into the pillow without lifting his head. “Are you just sitting there, staring at me?”

Adrian, who had clearly been awake, sitting there, staring at him, shifted on the sheets. Trevor inhaled deeply through his nose. The other man’s scent was everywhere around him, like a cocoon. On the pillow, on the sheets, in the very air and it mixed with the sweat and sex still lingering on them both. That, combined with the mind-numbing and body-calming after effects of one of the best orgasms he could remember having was just the right set up to drift off into unconsciousness.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Adrian was sitting there, staring at him.

When Adrian didn’t answer, Trevor was forced to lift his head. “You are.” He accused sleepily, still clutching his pillow. “Stop it. Go to sleep.”

As per usual, Adrian questioned him. “Is this some sort of rule, like how you don’t want to eat in someone’s presence who isn’t also eating? If _you're_ asleep the person with you must also be asleep?”

Amazed that Adrian could somehow muster sass after the very nearly perfect sex they’d just had, Trevor buried his face in the pillow again. The sexy jerk’s superior senses would hear him just fine. “No, it’s not a ‘rule’. But sleeping after sex is one of life’s great pleasures. Try it. You’ll love it. I promise. Now go to sleep, Adrian.”

Trevor wasn’t sure why he did what he did then, which was to reach out to pet Adrian’s leg. Perhaps the action was in punctuation to his order or perhaps it was meant to lull the man into complying like an obstinate house cat. Either way, he rested his fingers on the jut of Adrian’s hip as his thumb rubbed in idle circles just below it.

He stole a glance up from the pillow to notice that the spot he was rubbing looked just as he thought it would. No bruises and the skin wasn’t even red from the ardent _and rough_ treatment earlier. He felt strangely at odds about it. He was still thrilled to have had a lover he didn’t have to hold himself back for, but it was also a bit sad that there would be no evidence of their tryst on Adrian in the morning. Another great pleasure in life was waking up marked and bruised for _good_ reasons like this and not because you had to fight off hell's hordes before bed. Adrian would never have to suffer either eventuality he supposed.

Even with two thirds of Trevor’s face concealed by bedding, Adrian, who had continued to sit and stare and not go to sleep as suggested, managed to work out his thoughts from his expression. He drew his brows together slightly and tilted his head in what Trevor assumed passed for mild concern now that the man’s well-controlled features were back in place.

“You look disappointed.” Adrian said and then he looked down at Trevor’s hand which was still stroking his leg gently. “Is touching me different now than it was a little while ago?” Then he added a statement of fact as if somehow Trevor hadn’t noticed. “And, you are calling me Adrian.”

Trevor surrendered to inevitability, decided sleep wasn’t on the agenda for either of them, and propped himself up on another pillow to have a proper conversation. He shook his head in the negative to reject what Adrian had strangely misinterpreted as a problem with touching him. “No, it's not that. It’s just…”

_How to explain this to someone who spontaneously heals without a thought, and who thinks scars are all things of horror?_

“Well...it’s just that I wasn't exactly gentle with you but you obviously don’t have any bruises. I was only thinking that sometimes it's nice to have marks or something after a great fuck to prove it happened or remind yourself how great it was the next morning.”

When ‘next mornings’ were so often spent alone, that physical ache, bruise or brush burn and the happy accompanying memories were occasionally the only things that carried him through the bad days. It proved that Trevor Belmont had made a connection to life instead of death, even if only passingly.

Though Trevor lacked the eloquence to actually articulate that sentiment, Adrian seemed to understand.

“I’m sorry I did not touch you in a way you would have enjoyed.”

_Oh for fuck’s sake. This is why sleep is better than talking after sex._

Trevor really didn’t want to put a damper on the fantastic orgasms they’d just shared so he decided to emphasize that.

“Adrian, I can honestly say that I’ve never in my life enjoyed a fuck as much as I enjoyed what just happened. And, don’t worry about it. Watching you actually do what I asked by keeping your hands in place above your head for me was nice in and of itself. Oh. And yes. I’m calling you Adrian. You’ve called me Trevor a few times tonight, not the least of which was when I put my dick in you, so we're even I guess.”

“Then I am ‘Adrian’ to you now in my own right? And not simply someone antithetical to Dracula?”

Trevor shrugged. “As much as it looks like I’m ‘Trevor’ to you now and not just some random ‘Belmont’ killing machine. We’ve shared _a lot_ of bodily fluids, if you haven’t noticed. I think we can start calling each other by the names we actually want to be called for a change.” Trevor tried his best to read Adrian’s cryptic expressions again. He failed. “Uh..right?”

Blood and body fluids aside, was he presuming too much?

The truth was that, maybe, Trevor did still think of Adrian in the context of his father sometimes. But he also now thought of him as Adrian, whose hair smelled fantastic and felt amazing when it brushed along his skin and whose lips and tongue tasted sweet against his own and whose voice made his cock hard just thinking about it crying out for him. And who annoyed the hell out of him for not letting him sleep after sex.

Adrian didn’t confirm it was alright to call him by his given name. Instead, he faintly smiled, stared across the room into the fire and eventually said, “I’ve never allowed that to happen before, you know.”

“What, let someone call you Adrian?”

“No, let someone ‘put their dick in me’ as you so crassly put it.”

_…?_

_...holy fucking shit._

Trevor thought his heart might have stopped for a few whole seconds. He sat bolt upright and faced Adrian.

“Are you...are you serious? Hold on...wait, don’t...uh, I...I’m not sure if I want you to be serious or not. _Are you fucking serious?_ ”

Trevor almost grabbed him to shake him but _jesus fucking christ_ if he was serious he’d probably manhandled him enough for one night.

Adrian raised one imperious eyebrow and glared down his perfectly straight nose at Trevor. Only he could manage to look condescending while admitting to his first time taking it up the ass.

“How would I benefit from lying about such a thing?”

_He’s serious. Fucking hell, he’s serious._

Trevor crumbled and dropped his head into his hands. _“Oh my god._ You’re serious.” He didn’t know if he should cheer for himself, apologize, laugh or _run the fuck away._ Not able to look back up at Adrian’s face, he spoke into his palms. “Did you...like it?”

“I came, didn’t I?”

Trevor looked up. “What kind of an asshole answer is that!? Holy shit, Adrian, if I’d known...you could have said...I wouldn’t have...I _would_ have… _I don’t know!_ Done something...better? Slower? _Nicer?”_

Trevor’s crazed rambling was met with a smile followed by low, soft laughter.

“This was hardly my first time having sex, Trevor, there’s no need for you to feel awkward about it. My sexual experience is extremely varied, I simply never had a partner I desired that from. I will say, however, that you seem to have a very long and itemized list of ‘nice things’ associated with sex that I’ve never considered.”

Trevor’s spirits lifted slightly.

Adrian looked into his eyes then. “And if you would like a more reassuring answer to your question: I liked it very much.”

Trevor’s spirits lifted significantly.

“But…”

And just like that, Trevor’s spirits fell right back down. _Of course there would be a ‘but…’_

Adrian held his gaze. “...I find myself wanting to show you how I normally do things.” His voice dropped a whole octave when he said that and Trevor felt the vibrations of it straight down to his still exhausted cock. _“But…”_

_Up and down. Up and down._

Another ‘but’ and Trevor knew what it was this time. He turned and got off the bed. The room was warm even though he was naked and the glow of the firelight was muted and comforting. He stretched and walked over to the mantle to rest his arms on it and stare into the burning embers.

Adrian stayed where he was. Trevor wasn’t sure if he’d given up on continuing his ‘but’ because he’d left the bed or if he’d just thought better of continuing at all.

The first part of Adrian’s statement before the ‘but’ was a very tempting offer. _But..._ whatever he had in mind certainly sounded like it involved touching. Which would inevitably involve touching Trevor’s scars.

Trevor toed at the flakes of cooling ash along the edges of the hearth. Did he care? And if he did care, what exactly did he care about? When he was balls deep in Adrian he had certainly wished the man could touch him, but now? Back on the other side of mindless lust, when he was thinking with his brain again, were there other, good reasons to keep his distance?

He thought of the scar on his stomach and the one on his hand. There were some on his arms and some on his legs, some on his chest and back and shoulders. And the one on his face. He was a fucking mess actually. No wonder the man didn’t want to touch him. And he didn’t want to subject him to any of the particularly ugly memories behind some of them.

Trevor startled when he felt hot breath at the back of his neck. Completely escaping his notice, Adrian had left the bed and had come up behind him.

_He’s dangerous for so many reasons..._

But Trevor couldn’t seem to match his body’s actions to the warnings his brain was giving him. A light kiss met the top of his spine and soft hair tickled at his back. He arched into the attention like he was the house cat now.

Adrian spoke, hot breath and soft hair both now tickling his skin. “I do not wish to intrude upon your private memories without permission. _But I would very much like to touch you.”_

Time passed, and they just stood there like that, Adrian at Trevor’s back, the faintest brush of his lips continuing to serve as a safe point of contact. When the kisses became more firm, angling forward towards Trevor’s pulse and accompanied by the barest grazing of sharp teeth, Adrian spoke again.

_“Would you let me give you a new scar, Trevor?”_

Trevor’s back went rigid and he was silent but he didn’t move or push Adrian away. He kept his arms on the mantle, his eyes still cast downward at the fire. A flutter had started in his stomach, and it grew wildly as Adrian kept talking.

“It doesn't have to be painful or deadly or any of those things the church and your family taught you it must be…” Every other word was interrupted by a nip, a lick, an affectionate nuzzle.

When Trevor did nothing but stand there trying to get his butterflies under control, Adrian pulled back, misinterpreting him again.

“No. I thought not.” He said, but before he could turn away, Trevor spun around and caught his arm.

“Hey, I could say the same to you. Scars aren't always bad, you know. They might hurt but, like I said, sometimes they can have good memories attached.” He had no idea where any of this was going but Adrian was looking right in his eyes now, his mouth open, the tips of his fangs showing, his rapt attention directed, undeservedly, at Trevor, so he felt obligated to continue even without a clue as to where he was taking this.

As usual he let his big mouth take him somewhere he hadn’t intended.

“Here, let me show you.” He took one of Adrian’s hands and twisted to display an old scar on his shoulder. “See this one?”

Adrian nodded once. His hand felt tense inside Trevor’s.

“Do you trust me?” Trevor asked and he waited.

Adrian looked at their joined hands, then at the scar, and then up into Trevor’s eyes.

“Yes. I trust you.”

~

Adrian did trust him. And it wasn’t the kind of trust he was accustomed to that came with always holding the upper hand. It was easy to trust when you stood to lose nothing and there was no risk of coming to harm. Adrian surprised himself by realizing he actually did trust Trevor Belmont as he held his hand, offering to share potentially painful but meaningful memories of his past without qualification.

Trevor directed Adrian’s fingertips to rest on the scar he indicated. At first, nothing happened and all Adrian felt was warm skin and hard muscle. When Trevor relaxed under his touch, closed his eyes and smiled to himself, Adrian closed his eyes as well.

As soon as his lids fell shut, he gasped at a sudden rush of... _pleasure?_ It was deeply erotic and Adrian was so surprised that Trevor must have felt his reaction and he chuckled at it.

“Well, can you see how I got that one?” He asked.

Adrian stepped forward and spread his whole hand along the scar. The pleasure increased, not only from the memories but from Trevor’s hand that had come to rest on his waist, keeping him held close.

A vision came to him then. A handsome man with blond hair, a seductive smile and brown eyes. Laughter, cool night air, the smell of fresh hay bales and autumn foliage. _And pressure._ The tight, electrifying, painful, arousing, intimate pressure of being fucked, that Trevor had just introduced him to personally, and was now sharing with him in a memory. Adrian saw, felt, _lived_ , this moment where Trevor was getting fucked and enjoying every second of it. Adrian gasped again when he felt past-Trevor peaking and then suddenly a sharp pain tore through his shoulder at just the right _-or maybe wrong?-_ moment.

Adrian pulled his hand away and opened his eyes to see Trevor looking at him and smiling.

 _“That_ was _my_ first time taking it. And _god_ , was it good.”

“How did you injure the back of your shoulder during sex?” Adrian asked.

Trevor rolled his eyes at him. “I was getting fucked up against the side of a barn, Adrian. I tore the skin on a nail. And I didn’t give a damn because I was too busy having fun. So. There you go. A happy scar. And a nice memory of good sex that I can be reminded of whenever I see it.”

Trevor let his other hand come up to Adrian’s waist now too and he pulled him closer, so their bodies were touching.

“I have another scar that isn’t exactly a happy one but I’m glad I have it and I’m proud of it. Here.” Trevor tilted his head and offered up the scar over his left eye.

Without a second thought, Adrian lifted his hand to Trevor’s face and let himself get lost in the memory.

~

Trevor closed his eyes and relived the getting of that scar in his head along with Adrian as he touched it.

He’d been young at the time, still a teenager maybe, though he couldn’t really say for certain. Those early years tended to all run together. He’d been wandering through a town the name of which he could also no longer recall. He’d had some money on him that he’d picked up from a hunting job for a fool of a man who summoned a demon thinking he’d be able to control it. He made short work of the thing, collected his pay and then planned to walk a straight line to the nearest tavern with every intention of walking a crooked line away from it nicely drunk. He never made it to his cups.

Right in the town square, between him and his wished-for ale, was a woman, loudly protesting an accusation that she’d been the one to summon the demon, to the mob of villagers that surrounded her. No one believed her, so of course torches and a stake appeared. What surprised Trevor then, that wouldn’t even cause him to blink nowadays, was that her most vehement accuser was the man who’d actually summoned the damn thing, who’d just paid Trevor to kill it. And there he was, ready to light her up himself to cover his own stupid selfish ass.

So Trevor did what he did best and started a fight. Once everything broke down, it was clear the man was going to try to kill both him and the woman to erase any evidence that he was the actual witch among them. Trevor managed to save the woman’s life with his face by jumping in the path of the knife swipe that was meant for her. The woman got away and so did Trevor...after he ripped three fingers of the man’s knife hand off with his whip and then ran him through with his short sword.

That demon-summoner was the first _human_ he’d ever killed. _And it felt damn good._

He was proud of that scar. He was proud of murdering that human. He’d saved someone innocent and killed someone guilty. He didn’t give a fuck that it wasn’t a vampire or any other nasty creature of the night. If he’d learned anything out in the world on his own, it was that humans were the nastiest creatures of them all.

He had no desire to be any sort of righteous warrior of Christ. But he could still preserve life and he could also take it if needed. That scar represented, simultaneously, his vow to fulfill his family’s mission, and also his own personal vow to himself that if there was a human that deserved to die as much as any demon, he’d be the one to kill it.

It wasn’t like he was getting into heaven anyway.

He was so wrapped up in his own memory of the incident, he didn’t realize that Adrian had taken his hand away from the scar and moved it to cup under his jaw. He looked at him, once again, with a complex and uninterpretable expression. Trevor decided he much preferred the man’s face when he’d given himself over to unguarded lust and every twitch of his eye or quirk of his mouth spoke volumes of desire and emotion.

“That was the first human you ever killed.” Adrian whispered.

It looked like he saw everything he needed to see. “That’s right.” Trevor confirmed, and then he said aloud the thing, until now, he’d kept to himself. “And it felt good. I may have this scar to show for it, but it made me stronger, _smarter,_ and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

~

_He’s dangerous for so many reasons…_

And yet, Adrian knew how he felt now. So it mattered not. His world finally made sense. Why he was still walking the earth. Why he’d been awakened from a sleep he wasn’t sure he’d ever planned on awakening from. Why he was here, now, holding a human named Belmont who hunted his kind...and also killed humans when fate called him to do so.

Trevor Belmont had been like a language he understood only in pieces and couldn’t speak. Something about him was elusive, maddening, just outside his grasp. But now _it all made sense._ Adrian had no idea if it was because he’d allowed this man to take things from him and know him in ways that he’d never even thought to offer to anyone else in the world, or if it was the fact that he now knew this man as he knew no other. There was now one solitary soul whose voice he could pick out from the torrent of a raging hurricane and whose blue eyes he would see even through the black and lightless depths of the ocean.

Adrian remembered his dreams before Trevor woke him from his long sleep, _needing him,_ to save his life. That thing, that feeling, that anchor in the void that had always been just out of arm’s reach was _here._ It was right in front of him. He knew this now. And he thought of his parents.

He understood their puzzle, and how it fit together, how they fit together, and how the puzzle of Adrian Tepes and Trevor Belmont fit together. Vlad was a man with the world at his fingertips, yet trapped all the same by that which made him unique, always looking, searching, learning until he thought, in his ignorance, there was no more. Lisa was chaos, guile and a bold ignorance of her own. Similar and yet different. Complementing. Perfect and imperfect all at once. Real. Vital. Trevor was _his._ And his alone. And he was now Trevor’s.

Adrian cupped Trevor’s jaw in his hand. “Do you think your god answers prayers?”

Trevor looked back at him, confusion written all over his always obvious face. “Uh...he’s hardly ‘my god’. But no. I don’t.”

Adrian kissed him. Slowly this time, with intention. The act had none of the frenzy from earlier. None of the anxiousness. None of the blindness. His eyes were wide open now. He pressed their lips together. He let Trevor feel his fangs on his tongue. He ran his hands up the man’s flanks and he pulled him in until their torsos, pelvises, arms and legs fit against one another like puzzle pieces.

“Are there prayers I can answer for you?”

Speechless, his face still a beautiful mess of confusion, Trevor just stared back at him. Adrian smiled indulgently. “Can I make love to you my way now?” He asked. _“Can I touch you?”_

~

“Oh my god, yes.” Trevor breathed against Adrian’s mouth. Whatever brought this on, was fine with him. All he’d meant to do was try to make the man less disgusted by his scars. Somehow now he was getting offered more sex. _Which was fine with him._ His eager cock got hard again as soon as Adrian kissed him. Slick tongue, sharp fangs, powerful limbs all for him and he was all in.

Adrian laughed that soft lordly laugh of his again. “Am I your god now then?” He was kissing his neck...and gently scraping the nails of one hand up the side of his thigh...and searching out, with elegant fingers, the length of his cock... _and finding it._ When his thumb flicked at the single pearl of moisture that had gathered at the tip, Trevor moaned in torment.

“Adrian, I’ll call you anything you want if you’ll just _fuck me_ right now _.”_

“Such easy prayers to answer.” He whispered and then he began what would become a long list of god-like edicts that Trevor was all too happy to follow. “Turn around for me.”

Trevor turned, his back once more to Adrian, who ran his hands across his shoulders and down his arms only to grab his one of his wrists and direct him to hold onto the mantle with his hand. Adrian then took his other hand and directed it to Trevor’s cock.

“Take yourself in your hand, Trevor.” He murmured in his ear from behind. “Show me how you want me to touch you.”

Trevor didn’t hesitate to do exactly as asked, but instead of just jerking himself off, which he was more than happy to do if Adrian was planning on fucking him, Adrian put his own hand over top of his and moved forward and back along with him.

When Trevor tried to go faster, though, Adrian stopped him, reining him in and measuring his pulls. When he tried to shorten his stroke to focus on the sensitive tip, Adrian stopped him again and made him stroke the whole length from aching base to quivering slit.

It was unbelievably unsatisfying. Agonizing, in fact. He would never come from this and yet he kept getting stiffer and stiffer and he was leaking shamefully and pointlessly with every unhurried motion.

Several minutes of this passed with Adrian directing his masturbation all while kissing at his neck and whispering encouragement and admonitions. “ _Make yourself harder for me, Trevor. Slow down or you’ll come too soon, Trevor.”_

The worst was yet to come.

When Trevor had finally resigned himself to the fact that he would die here, stroking himself, half in ecstasy, half in agony, and not allowed to come, Adrian’s attention split to his own hard cock.

Without stopping his job of guiding Trevor’s hand, he started stroking his own length. It was just as painfully slow. He pressed himself against Trevor’s back so he felt every movement behind him. He felt each of Adrian’s knuckles drag against the cleft of his ass as he tugged himself off, _one, two, three, four, one two, three four._ He had the precision of a musician and he was certainly playing Trevor like an instrument.

And so it went on. Kiss at his neck, stroke of his dick, drag of a hand against his ass along a cock Trevor wanted so badly now he was ready to start begging.

Finally, he was given the opportunity to do so.

“Tell me what you want, Trevor.”

“Holy shit, just make this slow fucking torture stop and fuck me.” He pleaded, all while the slow fucking torture continued.

“I’m going to let go of your hand now, but I want you to keep this pace, no matter what. Can you do that for me?”

It was getting harder to answer. He just wanted to come. If this was the only way it would happen, so be it.

“Yes. _Fucking hell, yes.”_

 _“Good boy.”_ Adrian whispered in his ear.

Trevor laughed as he continued to stroke himself slowly. “You asshole. Have more respect for your elders.”

“I promise I’ll respect you in the morning. Now, legs apart for me.” Adrian kicked gently at his ankles bidding him to widen his stance. Obviously, Trevor did as he was told. Adrian’s other hand, the one that wasn’t still tugging and grinding his cock up against Trevor’s ass, came up to his mouth.

“Make me as slick as you need.”

By now, Trevor honestly didn’t care if he fucked him dry but again, he did as he was told. He dispensed with any sultry ceremony and sucked on each one of Adrian’s fingers in turn and then spit right in his palm. If Adrian had a problem with the unrefined display he said nothing.

Trevor diligently, _and slowly,_ moved his hand up and down his tortured prick. He was sweating and breathing so heavy he was getting lightheaded. And yet still it got worse. When he felt the slick tip of Adrian’s cock move up and down along his ass he sighed with relief. Adrian advanced his length forward, but paused right where Trevor needed it to be. He teased at Trevor’s hole with terrible, shallow little dips in and out but never enough for a stretch, never enough for that fullness, that fucking gorgeous deep fuck he wanted so much.

For what seemed like forever, Trevor endured a few scant more inches of penetration, but no more. He had no idea how Adrian was holding himself back. Trevor could tell with each shallow thrust the man was as hopelessly hard as he was and he had to be just as hopelessly wanting of an orgasm, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. To Adrian, it was as if this was his whole world. Nothing else around them, nothing else outside, only him and Trevor and time.

“Adrian...Adrian please...I want to come. I need to come with you inside me...please, please god please…” Trevor was near tears, near insanity, near reversing their positions, taking over and fucking Adrian on the floor again like an animal.

But he held back, he waited, and his wait was rewarded.

Adrian finally pushed into him, all the way. Slowly. Still slowly, but, oh god, it was all the way and when Trevor’s ass nestled against Adrian’s pelvis with the fucking glorious full length of him seated he moaned out his thanks.

Allowing him to adjust, Adrian didn’t move for another long while. Trevor kept stroking himself. He was hardly even thinking about it anymore. His hand had followed instruction well, obedient to Adrian’s trained pace.

 _How does this fucking man have this much control?_ Maybe he was a god after all.

“Can I kiss you so it leaves a mark?”

It was a genuine question, so since Trevor couldn’t manage to form words he just nodded a genuine yes. Adrian kept his pelvis still, sheathed to the hilt, but he dipped his head down and suckled at his neck long enough and hard enough to leave what would definitely be a large love bite, like they were teenagers.

When he was done, that was when he started thrusting. Adrian pulled his cock out all the way, so fucking slow Trevor could feel every fucking contour of it leave him and then enter him again. This was his new hell. Adrian fucking him slowly, kissing his neck, stroking himself, and wanting to come so badly he thought he might actually weep.

When Adrian spoke again, though, Trevor was shocked by what he heard. The man’s voice was ragged, strained, as it had been when they’d done this his way, frenetic and fast.

“Trevor, _will you let me taste you?_ Please?”

 _Just like our dream._ Trevor thought. And just like their dream, he said,

“Yes, please, yes. _And please, god, let me come.”_

Trevor’s prayers were finally answered. His head was so consumed by the feeling of Adrian’s hands all over him and his cock deep inside him, that he didn’t even bother to brace himself for it. Before he knew it there was a... _sensation_ in his neck. It wasn’t painful. It was _euphoric._

Adrian sunk his fangs in as deep as his cock and all of a sudden the entire world around Trevor _pulsed._ It was a feeling and it was a sound, a smell, a taste, a vision, a touch. All his senses were overwhelmed by it. All he could do was go limp and get washed away. Adrian supported his weight with one hand across his chest and his other hand came to wrap around Trevor’s still stroking his own cock. In time with the pulses, Adrian stroked him and fucked him, still slowly but now it felt like it had a point, it had an end and it was approaching.

Trevor felt Adrian’s deep swallows against his neck and he felt Adrian’s cock stiffen and shudder inside of him. He let his poor needful cock do the same in Adrian’s hand.

Another eternity of ecstacy passed until Adrian came up for air with a long low moan of Trevor’s name. He took Trevor’s hand off his cock and placed both of them firmly on the mantle. Trevor’s length hung hard and wanting as Adrian then moved both of his hands to Trevor’s hips, gripping tightly enough to be certain he would have bruises there in the morning.

“I want you to come while you’re on my cock, just like this, Trevor. Let me see you…”

With a few more slow but forceful thrusts, Adrian spent himself. So did Trevor, just as Adrian asked, untouched and right on the stone of the hearth, impaled on Adrian’s cock. The surge of their orgasm went on and on, low and then building, peaking but sustaining itself for longer than he’d ever thought possible. And there was something else he felt. It was something he’d always known existed somewhere but it always felt outside his arm’s reach.

He was content. Not restless. Not lonely. It was strange and new and right in his grasp.

Trevor swore to himself then that he’d kill every demon and every human on earth if he needed to just so he could hold on to this.

~

 _You’ll never come to harm in my keeping,_ Adrian swore to himself as he came, surrendering completely to the invisible whip his lover had caught him in.

_I swear, Trevor. I swear._


	10. Fate's Curse

Trevor stood in front of his old home.

The Belmont manor was how it had been in years past, tall and complete, with things like walls and a roof. Since Adrian didn’t know what the place looked like once upon a time in Trevor’s childhood, he guessed this was his own dream.

He breathed in the air, _sweet and real though a dream it may be,_ and he took in the impressive view. They were so lucid now, his dreams. Every detail was strikingly clear right down to the flutter of ivy in the breeze casting shadows against the grey stone walls it clung to.

As he stood there, admiring the place, not bothering to wonder where this dream was going, he felt the brush of soft fur slip beneath his hand.

A huge white wolf with gold eyes came up next to him and nudged his head under Trevor’s fingers looking for a pat. Trevor obliged and scratched behind one of his ears.

“This is weird, you know that, right?” He said to the wolf as he moved his hand to scratch behind the other ear.

Adrian just tilted his head and blinked as if Trevor was the crazy one.

“Oh don’t look at me like that. I just let you fuck me and now you’re a wolf and you’re making me pet you. In a dream. That we’re having together. _It’s weird.”_

Adrian closed his eyes and nudged again, demanding more scratching. Trevor huffed in annoyance, but he scratched.

“It may not seem like it, but there’s a limit to my tolerance for weird shit. Well, I mean, clearly we’re not there yet because I’m still fucking petting you, I’m just saying, we’re pretty close.”

Adrian snorted and looked up at him, silent. Not that Trevor expected him to speak.

“You’re enjoying making me talk to you like this, aren’t you?”

Another snort and a noncommittal blink.

“I guess I should be grateful you let me sleep this time. I was almost worried I’d have to climb in a coffin with you to get some rest. And I think that‘s definitely on the wrong side of my weird shit line.”

Adrian looked away from Trevor, ignoring him just as adeptly as a wolf as he did as a person, and turned his head towards the manor.

“I didn’t have it so bad when I was young.” Trevor said, waving a hand at the grand estate. Adrian looked back up at him like he was expecting something. “Uh...want to see my old room?”

Adrian’s ears perked up, which seemed like a yes, so Trevor led the way to the front door. It was unlocked, as it always had been, because the Belmonts were there to serve, their door always open to those who would seek their help. Trevor held a different philosophy. Evil things would find him without welcoming them in. Not that he had a door to invite them through anymore, but if he did he’d probably fucking lock it.

They walked inside together, Trevor on two feet, Adrian on four paws. The old place felt just the same, Trevor thought, as they climbed the main staircase. Like he’d never left, like he could move right back in. In all the years he’d spent away he never once wanted to come back here though. In fact, the farther away he roamed and the longer he was gone the easier it was to pretend he’d never had this, never needed it and never wanted it again.

The white wolf’s flanks brushed against his legs as they turned a corner on the second floor. Trevor wondered how difficult it was for Adrian to return to his own home under the circumstances he had. But he’d done it and, not only that, he’d stayed, willingly, even after all that happened, to protect his old home, and Trevor’s too. What was left of it at least.

All Trevor did was leave again.

“It’s strange coming home, isn’t it?”

Trevor still felt stupid talking to a wolf, but it didn’t stop him from continuing. Trivial little memories lived in every corner and each commonplace item they passed sparked a scene from long ago in his mind. ‘Sparked’ often being meaningful in more ways than one.

“See that burned corner on the tapestry over there?”

Adrian jerked his snout up. Trevor took that as an affirmative.

“I did that. I think I was around ten. My dad used to do this trick where he could snuff a candle out with his whip. I decided to try it and accidentally set that tapestry on fire. I wasn’t allowed to have my whip inside the house again after that. But I did eventually learn how to do the trick.”

Adrian sniffed. Trevor took that as a laugh.

His mother hadn’t been happy about it, but the singed tapestry was a good memory for him. At the end of the hall they were in, he was reminded of something not as good.

He stopped and Adrian stopped beside him in front of a large window. Sunlight was shining through a stained glass depiction of the Belmont family crest casting rainbows on the floor and on Adrian’s fur.

“I remember when they tossed a torch through that window.” Trevor said quietly and as he stood there, staring, remembering shattered glass and flames, he got his now habitual urge to leave. Just walk away and leave it all there. Like always.

Instead of moving his feet though, and without quite thinking about it, he extended his fingers letting Adrian’s head rub up under them again.

“Mm. I told you I’d show you my room, didn’t I?”

So Trevor stayed and continued on to his old bedroom, Adrian padding along beside him.

“Here we go.” When he pushed open the door, Adrian bounded past him and immediately jumped up onto the bed. He circled twice on the covers and then laid down, head on his paws.

“Make yourself at home.” Trevor offered after the fact.

He entered more tentatively than Adrian had. The room felt familiar and foreign at the same time. He knew every nook and cranny, every toy and book, every stain and every hole. But he wasn’t the same person who’d lived here. He wasn’t even the person who might have been if he’d actually finished growing up here.

Trevor sat at the edge of the bed. And just sat. Eventually, he laid back against Adrian, resting his head on his warm fur, listening to the beast’s breathing.

_Why am I dreaming about this?_

He was never one to reminisce much and the last place he wanted to live was in the past. But he was here now. Well, he was technically in Adrian’s bed sleeping, but his vampire-blood-magnified unconscious had brought him here in his dreams, of all fucking places, and dragged Adrian along with him, as a wolf.

“I think I like the dreams where we fuck better.”

Adrian seemed to agree and nuzzled Trevor’s cheek with his wet nose.

His real life body was in Adrian’s bed, in Adrian’s arms, in Adrian’s castle, but these had been _his_ lands once. Belmont lands. He’d never felt the pull to reclaim them, which was why he'd been so quick to gift them to Adrian in the first place. But why did he even bother to do that at all? If they meant nothing to him, why preserve them?

“Maybe I should stay?”

He barely said it out loud. Part of him wanted to take it back as soon as he said it. But the words were there now, the intention posed.

Adrian moved behind him and jumped off the bed. Trevor sat up and watched the wolf step around to stand in front of him. He reared up and rested his front paws on Trevor’s knees. Intelligent gold eyes stared up at him.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m not talking to you like this anymore.”

To his surprise, in the blink of an eye, Adrian, the real Adrian, was now crouched before him, strong hands and long fingers resting on his knees instead of paws.

“How...how did you do that?” Trevor asked. “Isn’t this my dream? I don’t think I did that.”

Adrian lifted one of his hands to Trevor’s neck and stroked his thumb against where Trevor assumed he would find a new scar when he woke. “I drank your blood. I can consciously sway your dreams to some degree now.”

Trevor sighed. “Of course you can.”

Adrian furrowed his brows. “Do you regret allowing me…”

“No, no.” Trevor waved away the question before he even finished it. “I don’t regret it.” And he didn’t, not in the slightest. “But if you’re controlling this dream, why did you bring me here?”

" _I_ didn’t bring you here, Trevor. _You_ brought us here. I only made myself a wolf instead of a man. I thought it might be easier for you to accept me here in that form.”

Trevor supposed he was right. “Now that you mention it, you’re much nicer to be around when you can’t talk.”

“And you’re much easier to understand when you speak freely.” Adrian tried to capture his gaze but Trevor looked away. “If you don’t wish to remember this dream, I can make you forget…”

“No.” Trevor shook his head immediately. “Don’t. I don’t mind this dream, it’s fine, it’s just that…”

Adrian sat back on his heels, giving Trevor time to form his thoughts. Time seemed to mean so much less to him. Trevor always felt like his back was up against it. Usually because the next thing trying to kill him was just around the corner, only a moment after he killed the last thing. Adrian could have cared the fuck less, making the world surrender to his pace, his leisure, his time.

“It’s just that…part of me wants to remember all of this. Like it’s important. I think it’s important? This place...and... _everything._ Part of me wants to stay here. But I never cared before.”

“And you care now?”

Trevor laughed bitterly at what he was about to admit. He rubbed his face with his hands, then he rubbed at the back of his neck. It was such a simple fucking question. But it was coming from Adrian, _it was about Adrian,_ which made it complicated.

“I think I care about _you_ now, you asshole.”

Adrian responded much as Trevor expected, with a smug smile and sarcasm. “You’re quite the romantic, aren’t you, _Belmont_.”

“Oh come on! What do you want me to say? I shouldn’t _have_ to say anything. Actions speak louder you know, _Alucard_.”

“And yet sometimes it is helpful if we pretend to be adults and use our words. So may I say something?” Adrian asked with his completely aggravating condescension and calm patience.

“Is it going to be another asshole comment like that one?”

“I think I’m in love with you, Trevor.”

Adrian was still seated at his feet, hands on his knees, head tilted up. His eyes were serious, without any shade of lust or haze of desire. And entirely without sarcasm or condescension, he continued.

“I find you absolutely intolerable sometimes. Honestly. You are agitating in a way that makes me want to gag you and chain you to a wall so you can’t sputter nonsense and cause trouble.”

“Under the right circumstances, that could be fun…?” Trevor smiled, but Adrian didn’t. He lowered his head slowly and rested it on Trevor’s knee. His hands balled into fists against Trevor’s thighs.

“This is madness.” Adrian spoke softly to the floor. “Needing you, wanting you…”

If it was madness, then they were both mad. Trevor needed this and wanted this too. Enough to finally admit it, enough for his dreams to spin towards home, where he never wanted to be, until Adrian was there.

“Adrian, I...” Trevor started.

Adrian stopped him and lifted his head. “It cannot be my feelings or my blood that moves you, Trevor. If it is love I feel for you, I will not love a reflection or an echo. I would have _you_.” Then Alucard chimed in briefly. “In all your contrary, infuriating glory.”

Trevor leaned back on his hands. Adrian crept up to perch over him, not letting him escape.

“You know, this would be easier if…” Trevor paused. “You are…” Again, halting. “This is…” He stumbled over his grown up words having no idea how to share his thoughts when he’d never had to bother before, with anyone, for anyone. But he _wanted_ to for Adrian. So he tried again. “ _Christ!_ You drank my blood. I drank yours. You’re in my head when I’m awake, you’re in my dreams when I’m asleep. Can’t you already tell how I feel?”

Adrian offered to tell him something else. He rested a hand on Trevor’s stomach. “Would you let me tell you what I felt when I touched this scar.”

Trevor just nodded, happy not to try and speak again.

“You were lonely. Profoundly lonely.” Adrian’s lovely face twisted in pain but it wasn’t from having to suffer it himself. Trevor knew it was pain felt _for_ him. “It struck me, Trevor. I was not expecting it. Not only because I did not think you capable of anything that profound but that you seemed to just live your life with it. Behaving like..like this,” he waved his hand, presumably at Trevor’s lack of profundity, “and not showing it.”

Trevor relaxed back on his elbows and sighed. “Um, just so you know, Sypha said you looked lonelier than me.”

Adrian’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t a competition, Belmont.”

Trevor grinned up at him. “ _Everything_ is a competition, Alucard.”

“Listen to me, Trevor…”

But Trevor was done listening now. He was ready to talk. He lifted a hand to cover Adrian’s mouth. “No. You listen. I don’t love this house or these lands or the hold full of creepy shit downstairs. I don’t fucking love that the castle we’re sleeping in right now used to be Dracula’s even if I could learn to love the wine cellar, the food and the hot baths.”

Adrian rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut behind Trevor’s fingers.

“I also don’t fucking love being lonely. _No one does._ But it was better than anything else I had. Until now. Until _you_.”

Trevor took a deep breath. “Can I stay here, then? With you. I’d...I’d like to stay. At least...for now.”

_For once. For the first time ever._

It was the best he could do. It was the most he could offer. He dared not say more, lest the fates come for him and put him in his place as they always did. But he could stay and he could _do_ , he could _show_ , he could _act_ , more clearly than any words. Until he felt more ready to test capricious fate and speak them.

Adrian seemed to understand. He took Trevor’s hand away from his mouth and held it, then he leaned forward and kissed him. They both closed their eyes.

“Stay with me, Trevor. And rest now.” Adrian whispered.

Trevor’s whole body suddenly felt very heavy and he suddenly felt very tired.

“Sleep here, in your bed, but wake in mine… _and stay with me.”_ Adrian kissed him again and the dream ended with Trevor feeling like he’d finally come home.

~

Adrian ended their dream. He wished he could have let them stay longer, linger together and rest. But enough had been said and enough was decided for now. Enough to make Adrian certain about what he would need to do and how he would do it.

_Because I refuse to end like my father._

For now though, he wanted Trevor to sleep, dreamlessly, and recover. He wanted to hold him in his arms just a little while longer.

Isaac was right about everything. Adrian had ignored the world he should have engaged and he allowed enemies to rise up around them uncontested. He’d let harm come to his friends, he’d put them at risk, he’d put the whole world he’d fought to save at risk. And blindly, stupidly, he’d fallen in love.

Which meant he would have to fight what was coming for them.

In fact, they were already here.

~

“Trevor. Wake up. _Now_. And put these on.”

Trevor had been happily dead to the world but, on Adrian’s command, he woke to full alertness and took the trousers that were being handed to him.

_Something is very wrong._

There was a sinking feeling in his gut, a tingle down his spine. His fingers itched with the anticipation of pulling a weapon to hand. And everything smelled terrible.

“Something’s here.” Trevor growled. _“I can fucking smell them._ Fucking hell, how long were we asleep?”

Adrian had moved to stand at the shut bedroom door. His eyes were closed and he held his hand against the knob but did not turn it.

“I had to let you sleep to recover after I drank from you. The sun has come and gone and unfortunately for us, it is night once more.”

“You let me sleep the whole _fucking_ day? When clearly I should have _fucking been hunting!”_

Adrian ignored his outrage. “They’ve infiltrated the lower levels of the main keep.” He said, and he squeezed his eyes shut tighter, as if concentrating, still not opening the door. “If Isaac knew how to enter the castle secretly and safely then Hector did as well. And he is not alone.”

“Fucking wonderful. Can we get to my weapons at least?”

Trevor would fight with whatever he had to, including no weapons at all if needs be, but this would go faster if he had _his_ weapons.

Adrian ignored him again, _not a good sign_ , grabbed his arm, opened the door and started dragging him down the hallway.

The stench of vampires and demons assaulted him and it grew stronger with every step they took as they practically ran through the castle’s corridors. The unmistakable sounds of monsters reveling in the night echoed distantly, and then closer, louder.

They ran faster and rounded the next bend only to be stopped in their tracks by a pair of skeletal demons. The rotted flesh that hung from their white bones suggested they may have been human in their former life. Whatever they had once been, though, mattered much less than what they were now which was two undead enemies staring them down not with eyes but with a shapeless red glow in each empty socket.

Adrian finally released Trevor’s hand when he jumped forward, not as a man but as a wolf. With a vicious snarl he leapt right for the throat of one of the demons, ripping its head clean off. When the other demon reached for Adrian’s tail, Trevor punched it, giving Adrian time to turn and chomp down on that one’s neck as well. With his white muzzle covered in blood and ichor, he howled and looked up at Trevor with wild gold eyes.

“Go,” Trevor said, “I’ll follow you.”

More running, and Trevor had to sprint to keep up with the wolf. They were attacked two more times, _-once by a vampire that Trevor staked with a candlestick while Adrian tore half its face off, and a second time by another pair of reanimated dead..._ things _that met their true end at the end of Adrian’s fangs-_ before Trevor realized Adrian wasn’t leading him back to the training hall where he’d left his blades and his Morning Star.

“Adrian, wait, where the fuck are we going?”

The wolf growled and tossed his head, trying to demand that Trevor just keep following.

Trevor refused to move. _“Where the fuck are we going Adrian?”_

Adrian was forced to transform back to himself to answer. “It is impossible to get back to where we left your weapons without encountering more resistance than we are equipped for.”

“Then just get us any weapons. Or float your fucking sword over here from wherever the fuck you keep it. _Jesus Christ,_ Adrian, this isn’t hard, it’s just another fucking fight…”

Adrian grabbed his arm and pulled him in close. Through clenched teeth he argued. “You don’t seem to understand, Belmont. If they have _your_ weapons, I…”

But it was too late. Trevor saw for himself what Adrian didn’t have time to finish explaining. From behind a row of pillars at the opposite end of the intersection they were standing in, the familiar sound of a chain being pulled and a weight being swung made Trevor’s blood run cold. Adrian turned, a wolf once more, and charged, but the Morning Star hit him from the side midair and he fell with a high-pitched whine and a thud on the floor.

Out of the shadows and into the light of the candelabra hanging from the ceiling, stepped a human man _-of course it was a human, the only creature who could safely use Trevor’s consecrated whip-_ and a vampire woman. Both thin and both pale with pale hair, but one had the vacant eyes of a beaten man and the other’s eyes were alight with victory.

The woman’s laugher traveled up to the rafters and the sound was followed by the pull of the chain again.

Blind rage ignited inside Trevor so quickly that what he felt when he fought Isaac seemed like a passing fancy in comparison. He had every fury filled intention of attacking, weaponless and mindless, _and getting his family’s fucking whip back,_ so it couldn’t hurt Adrian again, but Adrian stopped him.

As a man now, he shoved Trevor against the wall behind them. Instead of hitting stone, however, they phased through it, out of the intersection and away from the other human and the other vampire.

Trevor stumbled but Adrian caught him and steadied them both against a tall bookshelf. They were in a completely different room.

“What the hell…?” Trevor looked around. They were in the study. The study with the fucked up cult books and the fucked up magic mirror, the shards of which were scattered everywhere now, including stuck into the walls.

Adrian offered a brief explanation, but Trevor did not at all like where this was going.

“There are ways I can use this castle to my advantage, Trevor. But not without effort and not when my attentions are divided.”

Trevor’s rage started turning into panic. Adrian wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were closed and he was concentrating again. He held out his hand and the mirror shards started to shudder and shake and then they moved on his silent order to assemble in front of him.

Trevor was having none of this shit. _None of it._

He grabbed Adrian’s arm and spun him around so they were face to face.

 _“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”_ He asked, not bothering to disguise his suspicion.

“Listen to me, Trevor.” Adrian spoke slowly and clearly. Deliberately. Decisively. And Trevor’s heart sank to hear it. “This castle, the Belmont hold, _you_. None of these things can be allowed to fall to my enemies.”

“ _Our_ enemies.” Trevor corrected, his jaw clenched, his voice cracking with anger.

Adrian plowed right past his attempt at an interruption. “I cannot protect this castle, the Belmont hold _and you_ , all at the same time, and certainly not against your Morning Star.”

“Who in the fuck said I need your protection, you arrogant fucking shit!? Get me a _fucking_ weapon, consecrated or not, and we’ll fucking start killing things! _Together._ ” Trevor was pleading now. He couldn’t help himself. “And then _I_ can protect _you_ from my Morning Star and fucking get it back! Adrian…please, don’t…”

But Adrian still wouldn’t look into his eyes. He turned back to the mirror, touched the now smooth and complete surface and commanded it, _“Show me Sypha Belnades.”_

If Adrian committed to this, Trevor knew he wouldn’t be able to stop him. The same way Isaac wasn't able to stop Dracula.

“Adrian!” He was shouting at the top of his lungs but the words were muffled in his ears by his own terror at what he knew he would be powerless to prevent. “Don't you dare fucking do this! You don’t decide for me who and when I fight!”

Adrian rounded on him then and grabbed him by the shoulders. He finally looked him in the eyes and Trevor saw conflict there, but Adrian pressed on with his plan, though it was his turn to plead.

“Trevor, _please_ , I am not telling you to abandon me here. I am telling you to be sensible and retreat to a more strategic position than half naked and unarmed against an invading force. I refuse to allow you to be stupid and reckless.”

Adrian held him tighter and turned them so Trevor was between him and the mirror. Time seemed to stutter and then stop for just long enough to allow Adrian to kiss him. It was slow, as was his way, for seconds and minutes and hours were meaningless to an immortal.

When their lips separated, Adrian gave him an order. And Trevor both heard it and felt it. It flowed into him to course right alongside his blood that he’d willingly shared.

“Leave now, _love_. Seek help from our friends. And then, _return to me.”_

Before Trevor could kiss him back, or even acknowledge that he would obey, Adrian pushed him through the mirror and Trevor could do nothing but watch his home disappear.


	11. Whip's Sting

Trevor’s primal cry of _absolute fucking rage_ could be heard across the length and breadth of Wallachia.

To their credit, the group of speakers he’d suddenly appeared out of thin air in front of, half naked and screaming like a banshee, recognized him quickly, recognized that this sort of fucked up thing happened frequently when Trevor Belmont was involved and they just ran over to help him up off the ground. He shoved them away and looked around frantically.

“Sypha!” The speaker camp was busy, with people bustling everywhere. It seemed like they were packing up to leave. “Sypha, I know you’re here!” Trevor added under his breath, _“That’s why he fucking sent me.”_

From across the camp Sypha heard the racket and rushed to his side.

 _“Trevor?”_ She scanned him up and down and then reached out to touch the scar on his abdomen. “What are you doing here...like _this_...are you alright?”

There was no possible way for him to answer that question adequately.

“My wound is fine Sypha, better than that even, I swear, so please don’t waste time checking me or asking again. I need you to come back to the castle with me. Now. But first I need my extra gear. Gear. You. Castle. That order. _Now_.”

“What happened?” She asked and then more pointedly, because she knew him, _“What did you do?”_

_So much for not wasting time asking more questions._

“And where is Adrian? Right after I left you we got word that there were vampires and demons moving in fast from Styria in the west. I’m sending the rest of my people south right now to stay safe but we were getting ready to go to the castle to check on you.”

Trevor narrowed his eyes and repeated the one suspicious word in that speech. “‘ _We’_ …?”

The other half of Sypha’s ‘we’ walked up behind her just in time for Trevor to start yelling again.

 _“You!”_ He pointed at Isaac, enraged anew by the man’s calm fucking face and his _mighty fucking nerve_ , leaving him and Adrian and going straight to Sypha like he was telling on them to mommy. “You miserable fucking bastard! Perhaps you could have mentioned that bitch vampire and your stupid little friend were already half way up our ass?”

Isaac spread his hands in what did seem like true contrition. “Even I was not aware that Carmilla and her horde were this close. They must have traveled underground by day to cover the distance so quickly.” He then folded his arms across his chest and told on them again. “And you’ll recall that I was not the one who ended our encounter prematurely. As the two of you seemed preoccupied, I sought out a cooler head to petition. And one who stood a better chance of convincing you of the imminent threats we face than I.”

“Oh it’s ‘we’ again is it? I don’t fucking think so. I don’t need…”

Trevor was about to say he didn’t need anyone’s help, but the words suddenly caught in his throat and his mind was wiped clean of the thought. In its place, Adrian’s last words to him repeated themselves, so clearly that if Trevor closed his eyes he could imagine Adrian right there in front of him.

_Leave now, love. Seek help from our friends. And then, return to me._

Trevor squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shut out the painful sound of Adrian’s voice in that moment. With a single imposed order, Adrian openly declared his intent to _care_. He cared for Trevor and their home and he cared about Trevor returning to him and that home. He was asking Trevor to care also. Or maybe he was just giving Trevor the space to realize it was alright to care.

He needed to go, to move. He was wasting precious time here _talking_ when he should be with Adrian _fighting_ , with or without anyone else’s help, but the directive wasn’t releasing him. He heard the order over and over, louder and louder until he shook his head and grabbed his ears. “Ahhhhhh, shit!” He gave in. “Fine! Fucking fine!” He yelled his surrender to no one other than perhaps Adrian, who was far away, but still inside him.

Trevor opened his eyes and pointed at Sypha. “Gear. You. _Isaac_. Castle. Right. Fucking. Now.”

When Sypha still didn’t budge, he tried to walk away to get his things himself but Isaac stopped him with a hand on his arm. Considering the state Trevor was in, the bastard was lucky he didn’t bite the appendage clean off.

Isaac looked him in the eyes warily. “Are you... _enthralled?”_ His grip on Trevor’s arm tightened.

Sypha’s jaw dropped. _“What?!”_

Isaac pulled him closer and reached for his knife. “I am sorry, Belmont, but for your own safety and ours I need to know what has happened since I saw you with Alucard. If Carmilla has already attacked, I cannot risk that you have been compromised and are trying to lead us into a trap.”

Trevor yanked his arm away. “Oh for Christ’s sake, I am _not_ enthralled! Who the fuck do you think I am?”

Isaac studied him intently for another moment but then seemed to accept his denial that he was ‘compromised’. At least not by Carmilla.

“I think you are a Belmont hunter who has been willingly trapped by his own prey.”

Trevor ignored the implication in Isaac’s statement, mostly because it was true. The bastard had them pegged even before they knew it for themselves. There was no way he was getting out of a longer explanation now if he wanted to get these two to follow him back. And, unfortunately, Adrian had made it impossible for him to avoid getting their help and returning on his own.

“Sypha, how much did this asshole tell you?”

“Isaac explained to me who he was and how he helped you. _And_ that he attempted to speak with you and Adrian about the vampire who tried to capture you. I agreed to go with him to talk to you both again.”

Trevor waited for more but that seemed to be all there was to Sypha’s story. He was incredulous. _“That’s it?_ You just immediately decided to believe _Dracula’s general_ and take a stroll with him back to the castle?”

Sypha held her hand up in abject refusal of his fit. “Do not give me that look, Trevor, I am a better judge of people than you are.”

“People are all horrible pieces of shit Sypha!” He’d tried to tell her this once before. “Except me.”

She ignored him. Again. “Plus, Isaac said you and Adrian were being stubborn and not listening. Which I _absolutely_ believe, so yes, we were going to check on you together. Now please just explain what happened and why you’re here like this so I know what we’re dealing with.”

“Alright, fine. Adrian and I were minding our own business when Vampire Bitch and her minions invaded the castle. _Dracula’s generals,”_ he glared sideways at Isaac, “know secret ways into the place and his devil forgemaster friend Hector is on _their_ side. I couldn’t get to my weapons in time and Adrian forced me to leave to get some help so we can expel them. There. Good enough? Now let’s go. Come on, Sypha, _please_. You get to kill monsters and break things. Think of all the new stories you can tell.”

Sypha turned to Isaac. “Why did you think he was enthralled?” But before he could answer she turned back to Trevor. “And I’ve never seen you without your weapons. _Never_. What on earth were you doing that a pack of _vampires_ got past you? And where are your clothe...?”

The answers to her questions apparently finally hit her. All at once. “Oh…” Her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth. “Oooooohhhhhh.”

 _“Oh Jesus Christ.”_ Trevor had to look away when he felt heat rise up into his face. It was one thing to acknowledge to himself that he enjoyed cozying up in Adrian’s bed after a night of fucking. It was another thing _entirely_ announcing to the world that he enjoyed cozying up in Adrian’s bed after a night of fucking. _And_ let vampires sneak up on them in the process.

He was the worst Belmont ever.

Since both he and Sypha were now speechless and blushing like fucking adolescents. Isaac decided to delve further into Trevor’s questionable life choices.

“Have the two of you exchanged blood, Belmont?”

Another scandalized gasp from Sypha only served to deepen the red in Trevor’s cheeks. Whether from anger, shame, guilt or all three, he couldn’t say.

 _Yes_ , they’d shared blood, _yes,_ they’d shared their bodies, and _yes_ , all of that _meant something._ But he just didn't have the time or the wherewithal to explain it in detail right now. To Sypha or to himself. And certainly not to fucking Isaac.

“Listen, Sypha. Adrian healed me by letting me drink his blood. He gave me a choice. I willingly accepted the risks. And then... _things_ …happened, I guess? And we just...at some point…I let him drink my blood too and now I think we’re almost living in each other’s heads, which is fine if not for him being a _complete fucking asshole._ Who _we_ now have to go save from his own pointless fucking self-sacrificing stupidity.”

It was Isaac’s mouth that fell open then, in what Trevor gleaned from his expression to be understanding and sympathy. “He banished you from the castle. Through the mirror.”

Trevor grit his teeth. “Yes.” He said bitterly. “He did. And he told me to get help and come back to him. Which I intend to do _and which I would have done anyway_ even if I’d never let him drink my blood. So, no, I am _not_ enthralled, I’m...” Trevor choked on his words again but it wasn’t Adrian’s fault this time. Or maybe it was.

_What the hell exactly was he?_

“...Oh for god’s sake, can we just go now?”

Mercifully, Sypha’s face hardened into a determination that Trevor was both familiar with and relieved to finally see. She put her hand on his shoulder and with all seriousness said, “Let’s get you dressed and then we’ll go kill things.”

She led him to his trunk that she kept for him. The speakers had already packed it into one of their wagons. It had a few things he’d salvaged from the hold. She’d been the one to talk him into taking some items away with him at the time, saying it couldn’t hurt to keep them set aside for emergencies. He’d really only done it to make her happy, _-even though he’d chosen mostly weapons and not books as she’d hoped-_ and she’d even offered to hold onto them for him when he left her to go off on his own again.

He’d thought it unnecessary because he’d always carried everything he needed with him. No roots, no ties, nothing to return to, which was how he’d always lived his life. It seemed his life was changing though and, for better or worse, he’d never been so happy to see a piece of home.

As Sypha watched him rifle through the small collection of blades and whips he noticed the look of vague disgust on her face at all the ‘ugly’ weapons.

“Hey, you fight your way, I fight mine. We’re going to need both if we’re going to help Adrian.”

She came closer and placed a hand on his back.

“Don’t worry Trevor.” She said softly and reassuringly. “We’re going to help. He’ll be fine. And I see you’re calling him Adrian, by the way.”

“Ugh! Yes. Yes, Sypha. I’m calling him _Adrian_. It’s his name, isn’t it?”

She just smiled at him. “It is. And I’m happy you see that now.”

The only thing Trevor wanted to see now was the flaming corpses of the fucking vampires who’d dared to cross him. So, he armed himself to the teeth, in proper Belmont style, and, with their friends in tow, he set out for Adrian and home.

~

It took every ounce of willpower Adrian had in him to close off the mirror.

He could have followed. They could have escaped together. Gone back to his keep in Gresit, gone back to Targoviste, or Lupu, or anywhere else in the world, but he knew escape would only be a short term solution. And now, possibly for the first time in his life, he was thinking forward.

Though the roots were of the past, his future was here also. Trevor, in a stroke of ironic and completely oblivious genius, had acted on that fact without knowing how meaningful it actually was or would be to them at the time.

_‘My childhood home and yours...be its last defender…’_

With an innocent hand on his shoulder, he’d said that to him before he left all those months ago, neither of them knowing that he’d ever return, that they’d ever even see one another again, let alone...let alone…

Adrian shook his head. He couldn’t afford to dwell on emotions that were still too new and too raw to test. Not when there was so much to do, and so little time. He would prove this could be a home. For them, for the future. He would defend the relics of their past so they could build on it and create something for themselves that didn’t reek of terror and death.

But before that, a bit more terror and death would have to be dealt.

He could sense that there were too many opponents in the castle to fight against alone, so a full frontal assault was out of the question. On top of that, his side still burned where Trevor’s whip had struck him. He shuddered to think what the Morning Star’s sting would feel like in the hands of its true owner. Even his father wasn’t completely unaffected by it. Fates willing, he’d never know, so he dismissed the thought. He intended to still be alive when Trevor returned with assistance in the form of what he hoped were Sypha and Isaac. Because he had no doubt that Isaac went straight to Sypha after he threw him out in his infantile tantrum that was entirely beneath him.

Unfortunately, hindsight helped no one.

Right now, Adrian was grateful he was possessed of the foresight to attempt to lock down the hold before Carmilla found her way into it. As anyone could have guessed, she’d gone for the very obvious and shiny trinket to conquer first and invaded the castle. If she was aware of the equally valuable Belmont hold being right there in front of her, Adrian knew she hadn’t gotten there yet when he bid the mirror to show him the place. It was dark and silent, exactly as he’d hoped.

He could seal the hold. And then he could seal Carmilla and her lackeys inside the castle until Trevor returned. And then they would finish this.

Adrian braced himself for what he was about to do. It wasn’t ideal, but it was fast and effective. He’d once told Trevor the designs of his father were nothing more than machines. It was a willful lie. There was much more to the castle than mechanics, more than the physical world could explain. There was magic in the walls of the stronghold that his father built, because there was magic in the sweat and blood his father built it with. There was magic in Adrian’s blood, and it was time to use it.

Because, as Trevor might say, everything was always about blood to vampires.

Adrian took a steady breath and then tore deeply into his wrist with his fangs. Without letting a drop fall to waste, he held out his hand towards the mirror as it looked into the halls of the hold. He concentrated. Since Trevor’s own family had used black magic to seal it up when they were its keepers, Adrian felt not one fraction of guilt in doing the same.

As the blood left his body, he shaped it in the air with his intent. Like ribbons on a breeze it floated through the mirror into the library where it formed into an intricate series of runes that scattered themselves throughout the space. It took a great deal of volume, but he could afford it and as he’d just fed from Trevor, the sacrifice held some additional meaning. That it was Trevor’s blood, in a way, giving him the strength to perform such magic.

When the runes were complete, Adrian spoke their enchantments each in turn. The air around him grew heavy and the weight of dark forces settled uncomfortably in his chest. Soon, the blood runes subtly glowed and bit by bit grew brighter. The weight in his chest crushed down, leaden and unrelenting, and blood continued to gush from his wrist. He reached out with his mind and with the power in his blood to grasp the entirety of the archives.

His heart pounded and his vision swam, but soon, he felt it. All of it, safe and sound and under his control.

_“Seal.”_

He whispered, and it was done. The mirror went black. The hold was sealed and none but he could unseal it now.

He sat on the floor to catch his breath and he licked at his wrist but he kept the wound open. There was more yet to do. The mirror shards disassembled and fell as he turned his attention to the wall beyond it. Between the shelves and opposite the door was a section of bare stone. It was a load bearing wall. One of the foundation stones would have served better and made this easier for him, but there was no way he could get down to them without risk and he needed to act from where he was as quickly as possible.

He walked on unsteady feet over to the wall and placed his hand against it. Again, he let his blood flow. Between his fingers and into the stone, it seeped and faintly, the castle started to tremble beneath his touch. He reached his mind out again until he saw every room, every corridor, every tower and spire of the vast edifice as clearly as if he were standing in each of them. This spell would not have to be as severe as that which he used to seal the hold since Sypha would need to break through it from the outside, but the castle was immense and the work still required more blood than he wished he had to spend.

He kept his breathing even and steadied the massive fortress under his hand. Only a little longer, only a bit more and he would have it. But then footsteps sounded from the corridor outside and banging sounded against the heavy oak door of the study.

Adrian lowered his head and focused.

The pounding outside intensified as he intensified his own efforts and the castle shook violently enough to knock books from the shelves. He let his blood flow freely until he felt his knees almost buckle, but finally his reach was far enough and he clamped down.

The walls and the floor suddenly stopped shaking and everything went pitch black for a moment except for the glow of Adrian’s blood that was pooled at his feet and soaked into the wall. With an eerie groan the entire place seemed to settle, and then all was silent, but the air had changed. Adrian inhaled. The breath was stale and it nearly sickened him.

He’d done his work well. No one was getting out of Dracula’s castle now.

When the banging on the door started up again, this time determined enough to begin splintering the frame, Adrian had to worry about getting out of the room and his spell now prevented him from using the mirror to escape. He couldn’t tell exactly what was outside but, whatever it was, he would not have an easy time fighting it off. He’d spent far too much blood and there was no way he could recover sufficiently for a prolonged engagement with potentially ancient and powerful vampires.

Fortunately, he knew the castle as no other. Little boys will do as they do whether they are human or dhampir and he’d gotten into enough mischief within these walls, finding all the cracks, crevices, and dangerous places he had no business being in often enough for his mother to have insisted they spend more time in their cottage at Targoviste where she could better keep an eye on him.

The door was starting to give way so Adrian hurried over to the desk and pushed it aside. There were floorboards beneath it that he pulled up revealing a small crawl space. It had been nothing for child-Adrian to climb down there and have an adventure, but as he was now, he would never fit.

When he transformed into a wolf this time, he couldn’t stop himself from remembering their dream and Trevor’s unexpected affection for this form despite his protests. When the study door finally broke down and he squeezed into the hole, he swore to himself he’d make Trevor pet him like this when they were safe and awake together again.

Adrian crawled through the space and listened to the voices he left behind him.

_They’re here somewhere. Keep looking. Carmilla wants them alive…_

It seemed they still thought Belmont was inside the castle, which was good. Once they discovered that they were all trapped inside, he imagined their search would start to get desperate and if they thought they were still searching for two of them it would split their forces and make things easier.

Adrian reached what looked like a dead end of the crawlspace, but he knew better. He backed up a few steps, braced himself, lowered his head and then rammed the panel in front of him. Luckily it gave way easily with little noise and no disruption to the creatures in the hallway it opened up to. Adrian peeked out and saw three horned and tailed demon sentries blocking the path to the stairway he needed. It was nothing for him to take them by surprise from behind as a wolf, so with three down and scores yet to go, he ascended the stairs.

He kept on like that. Slow and calculated, picking off his prey from dark corners, one and two at a time, until he finally made it to his destination. He crept on padded paws, clinging to the shadows of the forgemaster’s chamber that he’d shown to Trevor. He found what he expected to find. Hector was there with Carmilla and he still held Trevor’s Morning Star.

If Trevor were there, Adrian knew he would try to kill them both as they stood. Whether he’d be successful was little more than questionable. Carmilla was no one to be trifled with if she’d dared to outright oppose his father and managed to manipulate one of his generals away from him.

One of his generals that she was, at that moment, feeding from greedily. The man was plainly and powerfully enthralled, to be doing nothing but standing there, letting his blood drain away even as he held a weapon that could end his enslavement in one limp arm. If it was Adrian’s goal to simply try and kill them both, this would certainly be the time to attempt it and, for one selfish second, he questioned his own sanity in wanting to save this shell of a man from the vampire currently feasting on him. But, he knew Isaac had the right of it.

Now that he wasn’t consumed by denial, everything Isaac said deserved to be heard and acted upon so, in deference to the father he once knew, before hate had overtaken him, he would attempt to save someone he’d once cared for. It was all he could do for him now. And in the same interests of paying homage to the memory of his sire, he couldn’t deny that he would get great pleasure out of stealing this bitch’s plaything away from her.

Adrian moved closer to the pair, as silently as he could manage trying to keep away from the glow of the forge fires beneath them. To his unfortunate surprise, however, Hector sensed his presence.

The man groaned and croaked out a warning to his mistress, “Wait.” He said, and Carmilla stopped. Adrian froze in the darkness.

“Oh, what is it, pet?” She cooed at him, in a disgusting mockery of gentility.

“He’s...he’s here. But, he isn’t... _himself.”_

She went from relaxed and indulgent to on guard immediately. But even with her defenses raised, she smiled. It was beautiful and unnerving at the same time. She looked around and then she separated from Hector and started prowling.

“Alucard?” She called out sweetly. The heels of her shoes clicked on the metal grates that made the floor. “Are you here, dear boy?”

Adrian stayed still as Hector straightened and gathered in Trevor’s whip, waiting for his mistress’s orders.

“Why don’t you come out and play? We could be friends you and I. Or more. _I could even help you surpass your father.”_

Just as she said that, she stepped past where Adrian was hiding. He took his chance and lunged at her leg, biting down hard, bringing her to her knees with a scream. He ripped off a piece of flesh as he pulled away, then he reared up and snapped his jaws down on her throat. She screamed again and fought to pull him off. She grabbed up fistfulls of his fur and her sharp nails pierced into him. They struggled and though he wanted nothing more than to spit out the foul taste of her blood he kept hold of her neck. She rolled them and drew her nails down, slicing into his flanks, and across the burn left by the Morning Star.

Adrian howled and she was able to throw him. He struck the far wall and shifted back to his normal form, clutching his side over the now lacerated burn.

Carmilla scrambled to her feet, as did Adrian. He was about to engage her again when she yelled Hector’s name and he obeyed her unspoken order without question. Adrian was ready for it this time and he dodged Hector’s swing. The man wasn’t as skilled as Trevor, but Adrian was a wounded target so he needed to make this quick. He dodged again twice more until he saw his opening. He phased and shifted across the room, away from Carmilla and closer to Hector. Biting down on his resolve, when Hector struck out again, he let himself get caught.

The whip wrapped around his waist and he cried out in pain. He heard Carmilla laugh somewhere behind him, and while she was distracted by her own amusement at the suffering of others, he charged at Hector. Their bodies collided and he wrapped the man up in his arms, the whip still burning into his skin. Before Carmilla could do anything, Adrian leapt and jumped into the fire of the forge, taking Hector with him.

They fell through flames and Adrian smiled to himself at the sound of Carmilla’s impotent shouts above them. Hector struggled in terror and each wiggle made the chains of the whip around Adrian dig into him more.

“Stop moving!” Adrian said as they dropped farther and farther. “This is _my_ castle you fool, I control its walls and its flames. You will not be burned.”

The forge fire eventually gave way and they fell down past the machines that generated it and blew it upwards. Falling still farther down, they passed more gears and systems that built the inner workings of the castle. When finally they landed it was on dirt, surrounded by dank walls and the smell of mouldering earth.

Not wanting Hector to die from a broken spine after going to the trouble of saving him from an eventual death by vampire exsanguination, Adrian twisted them so Hector landed on top of him, with Adrian bearing the brunt of the impact.

Hector rolled off him and Adrian groaned. He didn’t move at first, wanting to take stock of his own bones to test if any were broken. He slowly sat up, and gingerly extracted himself from the Morning Star. It was too dark down here to see if he’d have any new scars to show Trevor from it.

Hector backed away, making no moves and doing nothing but staring at him. Thankfully, he also made no effort to retrieve Trevor’s whip in the absence of an order from his mistress.

Adrian sincerely hoped the man wasn’t so manipulated as to not have any salvageable will left in him. Adrian approached him carefully.

“You seem to have some competency with this weapon.” He gestured to the Morning Star on the ground between them. “Can you help me and fight with it? Are you well enough to fight?”

Hector continued to stare, silent, and Adrian started to worry he was a lost cause. The man looked half starved, his face was a nightmare of bruises and his neck was a mess of puncture wounds. The parts of it that weren’t covered by the thick metal collar he wore, that is.

Adrian decided to wait. Eventually Hector lowered his head and rubbed at his eyes with his hands.

“I…” He started, but went nowhere.

 _“Fucking hell.”_ Adrian swore to himself. He didn’t want to do this, but he didn’t have until the end of time to wait for this man to climb up from the bowels of Carmilla’s prolonged enthrallment on his own. All he could do was be as gentle as possible.

He moved towards Hector slowly, and the fact that the man didn’t move an inch was a testament to how far gone he was. Adrian lifted his chin up, turned his head, leaned in and bit him. He did all he could to make it painless, but he had no desire to make this an intimate experience. As it was, he planned to never speak a word of this to Trevor.

Hector relaxed into Adrian’s hands, seeming to accept what was happening, but this wasn’t meant to be a transfer of ownership. Adrian only needed to be able to influence him enough so he could help him find his way back to himself, without Carmilla in his head.

When he was satisfied he’d made a sufficient inroad, Adrian stepped away and wiped his face on the back of his hand. He felt like he wanted to vomit after having Carmilla's blood in his mouth and now a complete stranger who was so tainted by her he could taste it. He had to remind himself that there was a point to this before he started to retch.

He closed his eyes and remembered the taste of Trevor on his tongue instead and the feel of him in his arms. It renewed his determination.

He looked back at Hector, who was now staring at the dirt and holding his neck where Adrian had bitten him.

“Listen to me, Hector. You must remember who you are and break away from Carmilla’s control. I do not wish to influence you further than this. _Now focus._ How much do you remember?”

It was another long while before Hector answered, and Adrian saw the struggle on his face. He waited.

“I…” Hector breathed in and out, shakey at first, but then slowly more steadily. “I remember... _everything_.”

Adrian sighed in relief. “Good. I’m sure you feel as though you don’t want to remember anything, but it is better this way. You know who I am then?”

Hector looked him in the eyes for the first time. “You are Alucard. Dracula’s son.”

Adrian corrected him. “My name is _Adrian Tepes._ And _I_ am master of this fortress now. You can choose to follow me, or you can choose to die with Carmilla. _Because she is going to die.”_

The man’s head seemed to be clearing and when he spoke next, it sounded as if it was of his own accord. “She has all of her generals with her. Vampires. And their forces as well. And she has the beasts I forged for her. There are many that came with us. She knew it would take a large number to occupy the keep, and she knows of the Belmont hold as well.”

“I’ve sealed the hold and the castle. No one is getting out of here or in there.”

Hector shook his head. “I don’t care if you are Dracula’s son. You can’t win alone.”

Adrian knew that was Hector speaking. Sadly, even without Carmilla’s influence, the man seemed broken.

“Carmilla came here not only for me, but for Trevor Belmont too, did she not? She cannot kill both of us. Even my father could not kill both of us. _And she will meet the same end he did, I promise you._ I am giving you a chance to make a better decision than those you have made in the past. Your first foolish move was serving my father. Your second was trusting Carmilla. You should never trust vampires.”

Hector scowled, pain and anger now emanating from him. “And I should trust _you_?”

“I am _not_ a vampire. And I can no longer afford to simply allow them all to run rabid.” Adrian softened his tone. “You have suffered in their hands, Hector, I know, and for that I am truly sorry. If you wish, I can put you out of your misery right here. Or, if you have something left within you that wants to serve a cause then, for now at least, serve me and mine. There is ugliness in this world, no one denies that, but it comes equally from those who call themselves demon and those who call themselves human. I understand this. The man whose weapon this is,” Adrian pointed to Trevor’s whip, “ _he_ understands this. There are others who understand as well who are coming to help us. So I ask again, _can_ you fight, and _will_ you fight?”

Hector closed his eyes. He clenched his hands into fists and then he nodded. “Yes. I can fight. And I will. But not for you. I’ll do it for myself.”

It was a better answer than Adrian could have hoped for. He extended his hand and Hector shook it, then he reached up and tore his collar in half.

“Thank you for your trust, Hector.” He said, as he tossed the thing aside. “Since we have little choice, and it appears as if you can, I will allow you to use this whip until we meet up with its rightful owner. But be warned,” Adrian lowered his voice, “use it to strike at _me_ again and I will make sure Belmont strangles you with it. Now. Let’s go.”


	12. Soldier's March

It was a slow march upwards from the dirt at the foundations of Dracula’s, _now Alucard’s,_ castle.

Adrian led Hector through bodiless catacombs, built for vampires, that housed empty coffins, and dungeons, built for humans, devoid of prisoners, that had probably once housed a Belmont or two.

Adrian took the opportunity to carefully interrogate Hector as they went, without pushing the man too much or making too much noise for any sensitive vampire ears to hear and expose their presence. Hector volunteered no information other than to answer the questions Adrian asked, usually with single words.

He learned how many generals comprised Carmilla’s forces and how many vampires each of them held. He learned the variety and capabilities of the beasts that Hector forged for her. And he learned her plans for Trevor had indeed been to capture him as a trophy.

She would have been the vampire who brought to heel the last Belmont and brought him and his family’s vampire hunting legacy to an end. Adrian couldn’t deny, it would have been a powerful show of domination that would have certainly lured others to flock to her allegiance.

Adrian hated that Trevor had been drawn into this. He’d been five thousand kinds of a fool to think his work was done after his father’s death. He should have hunted this woman out before she’d had the chance to get this far. This was all a mess of his own making, and he would allow it to go no further. After his mother and his father, there had been nothing he thought he held precious enough to protect with such vehemence.

Strange the things a few drops of blood can awaken inside. And the difference it can make.

At the sound of footsteps approaching, Adrian and Hector ducked into an alcove out of sight just before a small group of vampires rounded the corner towards them.

“How many?” Adrian mouthed the words only, not daring to actually articulate sound. Hector nodded and held up two fingers.

They’d agreed that, as they worked their way upstairs, they would try to execute as many of Carmilla’s officers as possible, two of which were apparently among this group.

It would be easier to sweep away the foot soldiers once Trevor arrived if their leaders were already dead. And it would make it harder for Carmilla to organize and counter their efforts. Then they could isolate and kill her as efficiently as possible. He wasn’t in this for dramatic effect and he had no desire to perpetuate the lust for torture and suffering his father had cultivated across centuries of hate and isolation. He needed to eliminate his enemies, nothing more.

Adrian transformed and waited. He still felt weak from blood loss and the burns from the Morning Star were not healing as quickly as he’d hoped but he was unwilling to take any more of Hector’s blood just to strengthen himself. He felt better as a wolf though. Whether it was because of the form’s stronger constitution or the fact that his vampire’s thirst bothered him less this way, he couldn’t say.

They remained hidden until the group was right up on them and then Adrian jumped from cover to attack. He knocked down two on his first pass and Hector was able to whip the Morning Star at one’s chest while it was on the ground. With a shudder and a flare of fire the vampire exploded. Adrian pounced atop the other and snapped his jaws around the thing’s neck. He bit down until he felt the crack of a spine between his teeth. He tossed his head and decapitated Carmilla’s underling in one clean pull. A third fell to Trevor’s whip quickly but the fourth and final one managed to grab Hector from behind. Hector struggled to escape the fangs at his neck so Adrian jumped in but all of them were suddenly knocked off balance when the castle shook beneath them.

Hector broke free and ducked, allowing Adrian to leap over him and take down their last opponent. The corridor was quiet for only a few seconds before another tremor rocked the fortress.

“What is happening?” Hector asked as he braced himself against a wall.

If Adrian could have smiled as a wolf he would have. He felt something tingle in his blood with the quakes. Someone was trying to break through the seal he’d placed on the castle from the outside. The magic assaulting his ward was subtle but powerful, and familiar.

 _Welcome back, Sypha._ He sent out a silent and grateful greeting to her. And to Trevor, he added, _it’s about fucking time, Belmont._

~

The speakers were kind enough to give them horses and they rode them hard back to the castle.

With each tree they passed and each shrub they trampled underfoot, closer and closer to their goal, Trevor felt simultaneously better and worse. He would be there soon, but he was starting to worry about what he’d find.

Unequivocally he knew Adrian was still alive. He wasn’t sure how he knew, he just did. Almost as if he could feel a second heart beating beside his own. Not that he thought Adrian could be taken down so easily but it was reassuring to know on some ethereal level that he was still with him.

He never thought the day would come that the word ‘ethereal’ would apply to anything in his life when stale ale and shit pipes were more in line with his expectations. But, he couldn’t say he disliked the fact that he might be able to reroute his future away from a depressing dead end to maybe something else? So he really ought to stop questioning.

Being bound to another person like this wasn’t turning out the way he’d imagined. And he could imagine a whole hell of a lot of unpleasantness. Compared to today, yesterday he’d felt aimless. Yesterday and every day before seemed pointless compared to that which drove him forward now, tethered as he was to another life. Yesterday he’d been floating about like flotsam on the tide. Today, he felt like a Leviathan. Which was also reassuring in its own way, feeling like a biblical monster and not a piece of garbage. Especially since he was about to go into battle.

What was not reassuring was the sharp pain that had started to nag at his side. It felt like a burn but he’d been nowhere near fire.

He ignored the pain and any disturbing worries that went with it so as not to be distracted. Thankfully, the castle and the manor soon came into view. He urged his horse to move faster but when they were halfway down the path to their destination, the beast reared back, almost throwing him.

Isaac and Sypha were nearly tossed off their animals too as if some unseen barrier impeded their advance. All three of them recovered and tried to turn the horses back onto the path, to no avail. Trevor dismounted and pulled at the reins but the stubborn thing reared, escaped Trevor’s grip and fled away in the opposite direction before he could stop it. Isaac dropped down from his horse and let it go without argument. Sypha did the same. She walked forward slowly down the path, breathing deeply and shifting her eyes around at what seemed like nothing.

Trevor wanted to blaze onward, caution be damned, but he knew better than to doubt Sypha’s instincts, so he waited, _impatiently_ , hands at the ready on his weapons, until she’d gotten the measure of what they were up against.

“Do you feel that?” She asked them.

“Uh...maybe?” Trevor actually didn’t feel much besides the burn in his side and urgency.

“Vaguely.” Isaac replied and he moved forward, his knife drawn. “Is there a ward before us?”

“Yes.” But rather than look concerned, Sypha smiled. “Adrian made it.”

“Mm.” Isaac’s eyes traveled up to the highest spire of the castle. “That...could not have been easy.”

Trevor tried to stay calm. He needed Isaac. And Sypha was his friend. But this standing around feeling air and sniffing magic was not getting them to their goal. He spoke as gently as he could. “ _Alright_. _Fine_. So there’s a ward. And Adrian made it. But why the fuck would he need to put up a ward when the enemy was already inside?”

Sypha frowned sympathetically at him. “It wasn’t to keep anyone out, Trevor, it was to keep them all _in_.”

Isaac continued, though he didn’t sound sympathetic at all. “Carmilla must not have made it into the Belmont hold yet so, by sealing the castle, Alucard was preventing her from claiming it. A clever gambit. And a dangerous one.”

Sypha nodded. He didn’t like her expression. At all. “I think he placed two different seals. There’s one around the hold that I know I can’t break, like he wanted to make sure no one was getting in there no matter what.”

“He could not risk that Carmilla might capture and use your magician friend to break through for her.” Isaac explained and Sypha nodded again.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, can vampires not do anything for themselves?” Trevor pulled his whip and snapped it at a tree out of sheer frustration. The irrational violence didn’t seem to phase either of his companions. “And could that _fucking_ prick have possibly made it any _fucking_ harder to rescue him?” He lashed out again and felled an innocent sapling in the process.

“Trevor, it’s alright.” Sypha did her best to soothe him, but by now it was like pissing in the wind. “I can break the seal on the castle. I think he made it so that I could, it’s just that…”

“It’s just that _what?”_

“Well, this magic, it’s...I think he…”

They were wasting time talking again. “Spit it out already, Sypha!”

“It’s blood magic. I think he used his blood to craft the wards. These are huge, powerful spells, Trevor, and to encompass the entire hold and the entire castle like this, he would have needed a lot of...well...we should hurry. Come on.”

Sypha started running and Trevor, needing no further explanation to understand, _for once,_ sprinted right up to the castle’s massive doors, cursing Adrian’s savior complex along the way.

He stood on the steps and looked up. Now that he was here, on top of the place, he could feel it. Even if he wasn’t very sensitive to magic, he was sensitive to Adrian’s blood and he could practically taste it permeating the space, making the air almost a viscous thing, shrouding the hold and the castle and pulsing with the heartbeats in his chest.

Sypha caught up first and stood beside him. Isaac came more slowly, and instead of focusing on the castle he went to stand in front of the Belmont ruins, looking out across the final resting place of Trevor’s legacy.

All Trevor could do at this point was beg. “Hurry Sypha, _please_.”

She wasted no more time, held out her hands and closed her eyes. Trevor watched as magic glowed at the points of her fingers and her lips moved in the soft chanting of words he didn’t understand.

As Sypha worked, Trevor paced. Weapons drawn, whip in one hand, short sword in the other, he marched back and forth, trying to visualize in his head what was going on inside. He tried to remember his dreams and what it felt like to be a wolf. He tried to see through Adrian’s eyes again, but it was no use. He couldn’t know for sure what was happening with Adrian until Sypha broke them in.

Good thing she excelled at breaking shit.

Trevor walked over to Isaac. “Do you have any idea how many vampires and demons we’re about to fight in there? I didn’t get the chance to find out anything about their numbers before he tossed me out on my ass.”

Isaac was brutally honest. “We both know that if Alucard is injured or weakened it will be too many for the three of us to handle. You may have defeated Dracula, but surely you realize that if he had not been ready to die and had his forces not already been thinned and divided due to Carmilla’s treachery, you almost certainly would have failed, even with Alucard at his full might.”

Trevor never liked dwelling on odds, but he stood to lose more here than he’d ever given a shit about before, so he tried to organize his thoughts on how they could possibly improve their shitty chances. Not easy when the ground started to shake under them. He and Isaac wobbled to stay on their feet but bits of stone crumbled away from the already crumbling walls of the manor house. He shouted over to Sypha.

“Hey! Was that you?”

Sypha yelled, voice strained. “Yes! I’m almost through, now stop bothering me and let me finish!”

Trevor turned back to Isaac. “I don’t suppose you can raise us a whole army in the next few minutes?”

_Holy shit...did I really just ask a man who makes demons for an undead army?_

Looks like the church was right about the Belmonts all along.

Trevor decided not to trouble himself over inconvenient truths and instead waited for the answer to his question.

Up until that point, once he’d accepted Isaac was a necessary part of this effort, Trevor had regarded him with a normal sort of suspicion. The sort of suspicion that he carried around with him as a matter of course. Sure the man had made a name for himself growing demons for the king of vampires but, since Trevor had basically sold his soul to the prince of vampires in exchange for a good lay, he couldn’t exactly throw stones from his glass house.

When Isaac answered him though, Trevor considered that he was possibly dealing with someone he should never entirely let his guard down around, allies or not.

“That depends on how badly you want an army, Belmont.”

~

With fresh focus, and the knowledge that Sypha would soon dissolve his ward, Adrian and Hector continued on. The fighting got thicker as they ascended and more than once they were bogged down by Hector’s demon spawn and had to retreat, especially since Adrian was now having trouble maintaining his wolf form and Hector, though holding his own, was in no condition for prolonged close quarters fighting against vampires.

As a man again, Adrian led them through another passage he’d not used since he was a child. Dark and full of cobwebs, the path was the last one he could think of to gain access to the entry hall and he hoped to get there in time to meet up with Trevor.

Every few steps, the place shook under Sypha’s magic and the two of them had to hold their hands against the walls to keep moving forward without falling. Soon though, Adrian felt a sudden lightening of the weight on his chest and the air he breathed in tasted clean again and not tinged with dark forces. With one last convulsion, the castle settled.

“They’ve broken through.” Adrian said in a whisper though he wanted to shout it. “We need to get to them quickly.”

He moved as fast as Hector could follow, but truth be told, his battered endurance was every bit as much a limiting factor. They heard clamoring above and below them and twice Adrian had to divert their route to avoid an altercation they were ill-equipped for, but the corridor they were now in remained empty.

“Only a little farther.” Adrian reassured his companion and on adrenaline and hope alone he quickened his pace until he heard heavy, dragging footsteps coming from up ahead. It was too dark to see what approached them and there was no where else to go from where they stood. Adrian stopped and they both held their breath. They would simply have to fight. Fortunately, it only sounded like one opponent.

Hector understood the situation and pulled the chain of Belmont’s whip in his hands. The sound of it echoed loudly against the stone. Adrian was about to try to transform again so they could attempt a first strike but then their supposed enemy came into view.

 _Trevor_ stumbled forward, clutching a gushing wound in his chest and he fell to his knees before them.

Every molecule of air in Adrian’s lungs rushed out. A crush of atmosphere and emotion seized his body and a frozen fear seized his mind. He dropped to his knees down beside the man he’d sworn to himself he’d protect at all costs, who was now bleeding out in front of him.

He couldn’t waste time asking what had happened. He knew what happened. _He’d failed,_ in spite of all his efforts, he’d failed. But no more. He would suffer not one more second of loss, not one more tear, not one more helpless fucking blood bound dream showing him nothing but regrets and the empty chasm of eternal life his cursed father had cursed him with, outliving all those he held dear.

He sliced the arteries in his wrist wide open with his fangs and shoved the flowing blood at Trevor, even as his own blood flowed to the floor.

 _“Drink it!”_ He shouted as he held the dying man in his arms, a morbid repeat of the scene in Adrian’s bed only days prior. It seemed like only minutes ago he’d held him in that same bed, quietly and contently. Peaceful. Happy.

“I... _Alucard_...I…” Trevor’s voice was hoarse and weak and his blue eyes were fluttering shut.

Adrian didn’t bother with another order. He pressed his wrist to Trevor’s open mouth and forced him to take it. At first, Trevor sputtered and choked and tried to pull away but Adrian refused to let go and eventually he had to swallow on reflex.

Adrian let his blood drain down Trevor’s throat. Even if it took every drop he had to heal him, he didn’t care. Trevor could have all that was left of him, if it meant he would live.

Soon, the reflexive swallows turned purposeful, and Adrian relaxed back a little, letting Trevor drink all he needed. Though he was starting to get lightheaded, he refused to stop. He closed his eyes and, in lieu of a prayer he knew would go unanswered, he chanted in his head, over and over, his intent to not fail this man that he loved.

_Death will not take you. Death cannot have you..._

It wasn’t until Adrian felt fangs at his wrist that he realized death was after him, not Trevor.

Adrian opened his eyes and the dread of the damned washed over him. He ripped his wrist away and his flesh caught on the sharp teeth that had sunken in deep right down to his bone. In his arms the form of his lover changed. Where Trevor’s face and blue eyes had been but a moment ago was now a white mask smiling up at him, a trickle of bright red blood streaking down from one hollow eye. The hand that reached up to remove the mask was not Trevor’s calloused and scarred one but one that was perfect, pale and thin. The voice that laughed at him wasn’t Trevor’s deep baritone, but a lilting, haunting feminine one.

Carmilla removed her mask and lifted her head to kiss Adrian lightly on his lips. She drew one finger down his cheek in pretended affection and she hummed with satisfaction. He could taste his own blood on her as she murmured against him.

“Oh my dear Alucard...you taste _absolutely_ _fucking_ _divine.”_

Adrian’s vision swam and a wave of nausea and revulsion made his stomach roil. Carmilla laughed again but over the sick, cloying notes of it, Adrian heard a blade being pulled from its sheath. And then he felt it as she drove it into his gut.

He coughed and more of his blood spattered out of his mouth. He looked down and grabbed the short sword she’d run him through with as easily as Christ was speared on his cross.

It was Trevor’s. _And it burned._ From the inside out it burned him, but he was too weak to even pull it free.

The last thing he heard before blackness took him wasn’t more laughter though. It was the sound of a chain’s _clink-clink-clink_ echoing against stone.

~

“We’re in!” Sypha shouted triumphantly. Trevor felt the air change. The castle groaned like a mountain god reluctantly awakening from a long sleep, and it made Trevor smile, as blood-thirsty as any creature of the night. He was about to put every fucking demon inside there to sleep for good. He turned to do just that, his question to Isaac forgotten in the face of finally getting back inside the castle to _do something_ , but Isaac grabbed his arm.

“Do not be reckless, Belmont, _as you have now been warned several times.”_ Isaac said forcefully. “You will accomplish nothing throwing yourself onto Carmilla’s waiting fangs.”

Trevor almost ignored the redundant warning and let himself be reckless, because _fuck that, Trevor Fucking Belmont_ had never lost a fight to man nor fucking beast. Until the voice of _Adrian Fucking Tepes_ started to creep into his head again.

“Rrrrghh.” Trevor just growled and snatched his arm away before the voice could guilt trip him. “Yeah, yeah, no rushing, fine.” Trevor clutched his weapons tighter to steady them. _Soon_ he reassured them, _soon we can kill things._ He looked Isaac in the eyes.

“Listen. If you can make me a fucking army to help us in the next five fucking seconds then _fucking_ make it. Do whatever you have to, that’s all the time you get, because after that, I don’t give a shit what that bastard ordered me to do, I’m going in there.”

Sypha came up behind him, fire at her fingertips, ready to go. “I’m with him.” She told Isaac. “We shouldn’t wait much longer.”

It was Isaac’s turn to smile. And it was the sort of smile that made Trevor instantly regret what he’d said but it was too late. In less than five fucking seconds, Isaac lifted his knife with both hands and stabbed it into the ground at his feet.

Time seemed to stop as a blue light enveloped the knife, then Isaac’s hands and then the ground itself. It shot up into the sky illuminating the entire area and it shone up through the earth and snow. The ruins quaked and rumbled and more loose stone fell from the manor walls. The rumbling spread out from the point of the devil blade and Trevor readied his weapons wondering if he now had a fight on two fronts. He and Sypha backed away from where Isaac was crouched down, still gripping his forgemaster’s tool.

The wind picked up and it blew the clouds away from the full moon above. It’s bright light glinted off the tip of Isaac’s knife when he finally pulled it free and stood. He sheathed it and crossed his arms, looking satisfied.

Sypha broke the tense, _and awkward,_ silence. “Uh...was that a spell or…?”

Isaac walked away towards the castle, telling Trevor as he passed him, “Prepare to command your army, Belmont. _They rise.”_

Up from the ground, from inside the ruins of the manor, from outside them, from across the fields and forests where the Belmonts had once lived, once hunted, once died _and were buried,_ they rose.

Skeletal hands clawed their way up, ashes long adrift swirled and formed, rotted corpses that had once killed demons now emerged from hell as demons themselves, crawling and howling and screaming forth into the night. Some were nothing but wailing specters. Some were as real and solid as Trevor himself.

_“Oh my fucking god.”_

It was all Trevor could say as he watched the spectacle. The handiwork of Dracula’s devil forgemaster, alive and in the corrupted flesh.

The flames in Sypha’s hands went out and she dropped them at her sides in disbelief. “Trevor,” her voice wavered, “are these…”

“They’re all dead Belmonts.” Trevor looked out at the scores of his reanimated dead relatives, his army, waiting expectantly for his orders. His mouth hung open, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He’d actually let this happen. Trevor Belmont, last son of the House of Belmont, had let a necromancer raise his dead family.

He was _definitely_ the worst fucking Belmont, _ever._

He sighed and shook his head. _Ah fuck it. This is fine._ Trevor hardened his heart and his resolve. At least they’d all get to hunt some vampires one last time. What more could any Belmont ask for?

“Come on, Sypha. Time to fight.”

“With...with _them?”_ She pointed at the Belmont zombie horde.

Trevor spread his arms. Because what else could he do? “It’s alright, Sypha. These are my people.”

She looked at him like he’d gone mad. Perhaps he had. Well, _definitely_ he had. “These _monsters_ are your people?”

He nodded, now very sure of his answer. “That’s right. Now let’s… _ahhh!”_

For a split second before he doubled over in agony, Trevor thought he tasted blood in his mouth. He dropped his weapons and clutched at his stomach. He tried to stay standing, but the pain brought him to his knees, piercing, _burning._

 _“Fuck!”_ He swore as both Sypha and Isaac rushed to support him.

“Trevor, what’s wrong? I thought you said you were okay!” Sypha wrenched his hands away from his midsection to examine him. “I don’t see…”

“No…” He croaked out helplessly. “It...it isn’t me…” The last thing he wanted to do was block Adrian out, but Trevor knew he needed him, _immediately_ , so he had to get up and get in there to fight. They’d run out of time.

Trevor focused and got the pain under control. _Adrian’s pain._ He cleared his head, cleared every thought and every impulse, purged every intent out of his mind and his body but getting to Adrian. Trevor stood, picked up his weapons and gave his army its orders.

“Inside. Now. _And kill them all.”_


	13. Life's Blood

****_Get up._

Through darkness and silence, Adrian heard two words.

_Get the fuck up._

Four words? However many words it was, the theme of their incessant repetition did not change but that made it no less impossible to act on them. Were they even directed at him?

_Adrian, get the fuck up._

Yes, then. They were directed at him. But again, acting was out of the question. Every inch of his body hurt. He was so tired, all he wanted to do was sleep. And the _thirst_...ravenous thirst like he’d never known paralyzed him, there, in the formless oblivion where he lay, listening to the disembodied words, ordering him to,

_Get up, Adrian, and fight..._

~

_Get the fuck up, you immortal bastard! I know you’re not dead, so get the fuck up and fight! I’m coming..._

Trevor kept repeating the order in his head. _Get up, get up, get up._ An incantation, a battle cry, a prayer, over and over, he kept talking to the shallow beating of the other heart, next to his, in his chest. The one that, even though it was only a feeling and not a thing of actual substance, was _there_ and _alive_ as surely as was his own.

Adrian was alive, he knew that much. He was weak and in pain, but he was alive and that was all that mattered.

Now, if he could just _fucking_ get to him.

The fighting was thick as soon as they entered the castle but the undead Belmonts proved just as lethal a force against evil from the other side of the grave as they had been in life. So, Trevor and his army of dubious origins swarmed through the keep. All while he tried to avoid actually looking any of his ancestors in the eyes. Or eye sockets. Or whatever.

Trevor deflected the swing of a demon’s fist meant for his face and then he pivoted to avoid a spray of fire Sypha conjured from behind him. She burned a wide hole through the enemy line but he didn’t quite dodge fast enough and had to tap down a flame that caught his sleeve.

“A little close, Sypha, don’t you think?” He recovered just in time to get his whip around the neck of a vampire that lunged at her. She froze the thing solid and it shattered into shimmering dust when Trevor jerked his whip back.

“Well stop getting ahead of us and I won’t need to throw fire to keep you from getting killed!”

Trevor neither heard nor heeded her. Whether it was Sypha’s fire or the fires of perdition licking at his heels it meant nothing to him. His life only held meaning now in the context of this. Fighting for something, protecting something, defending something. _And someone._

Sweating, heart pumping, covered in gore, surrounded by monsters, _some of his own making,_ Trevor found a soul-satisfying clarity he hadn’t thought possible. At least not when he’d been looking for it at the bottom of a tankard or at the end of an indeterminate stretch of destinationless road.

Whatever shit storm or hell horde came at him, _he welcomed it._ Because he was a _fucking_ Belmont, and this was his _fucking_ home and no one was going to take it away from him ever again. Adrian’s blood didn’t make that decision for him, it just gave him the motivation and a reason to own it.

Trevor hurried to search the next room, and then the next, and then the next after that. All he kept finding were leaderless packs of forged demons and vampires. Adrian must have managed to thin the numbers of Carmilla’s officers, which did help facilitate Trevor’s counter invasion, but there was still no sign of the bitch herself, and no sign of Adrian.

When Sypha and Isaac caught up with him again they confirmed they too had found nothing of either their friend or their foe.

“We need to find Carmilla!” Isaac shouted as he stabbed a vampire through the heart with his knife.

“We need to find _Adrian!”_ Sypha countered, sweeping another enemy off its feet with a gust of wind, allowing Trevor to catch it in his whip and pull it in to stake it.

Trevor was sure if they found one they’d find the other but running around the most unnecessarily complicated fucking castle in the world without a plan like this wasn’t getting them anywhere.

So he changed his tactics and stood still, amidst the carnage and chaos and magical fire, and he closed his eyes. He’d found Adrian once before through the maze of the main keep, blindly following the fevered desire in his heart, _and his cock,_ and the call of the heated blood in his veins. He found his way to his room and into his bed without thinking, chasing the chains that bound them without even realizing they were there. But Trevor felt them now and he accepted them, _he used them,_ to reach out.

_Come on you stubborn ass, where are you?_

_~_

_Where am I?_

Adrian groaned and tried to move. He was on the floor and he was in so much fucking pain he almost couldn’t open his eyes but he swore he heard Trevor calling him. He needed to answer. He tried to roll over, but something tore into his midsection with the foolhardy movement and seared at his insides.

Trevor’s short sword was still stuck in his gut and the reality of that, and how it happened, opened up the rest of the grim reality around him.

Metal scraping stone and the subsequent rattle of chain links reverberated in the corridor in quick succession, strike after strike after strike. A different voice then called to him and it used a different name, with much more anxiety infused in it.

“Alucard!” Hector cried out and Adrian opened his eyes.

 _“How dare you attack me, you worthless_ fucking _human!”_

 _Carmilla._ Hearing that hateful bitch’s voice was enough to motivate Adrian to struggle against his wounded helplessness. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of Trevor’s sword, grit his teeth and pulled the thing free. He couldn’t afford to be incapacitated any longer, whether he was bleeding all over the floor or not.

_Trevor was calling out to him from somewhere. He had to answer._

He held one hand against his stomach to staunch the spurting blood and with his other hand he kept hold of Trevor’s sword. It was like holding a hot poker, but if Carmilla had been able to suffer through holding it just to stab him, he could do the fucking same.

Adrian stumbled forward just in time to block, albeit clumsily, a sharp clawed slash meant for Hector, giving him a much needed moment to gather the Morning Star for another attack. Carmilla grunted in aggravation at being held at bay by the holy weapon wielded by her former pet and having to taste her own medicine.

Hector had done more than was called for by keeping them both alive and using his own pain to fuel their defense, at least until Adrian came to, but in the state they were in they couldn’t hold out like this indefinitely. Especially now that Carmilla had consumed his blood. There was no telling how much stronger it might have made her, or if she realized that was even a possibility yet.

And then, clear as crystal, Adrian heard Trevor beckoning him again. He answered with a command so forceful as to make sure Trevor heard it and obeyed no matter where he was.

 _I’m here._ He shouted in his head. _Come to me._

~

Trevor didn’t question the chain around his neck as it was snapped back. He just smiled at its pull.

_Fucking finally._

“Found you, you bastard!” He shouted - _or maybe you found me?-_ and then he ran.

He was vaguely aware of Sypha and Isaac behind him and other Belmonts beside him, keeping pace with him, his kind, cutting through their enemies with ruthless zeal. Trevor sliced off a demon’s wings with his sword as one of his predecessors smashed its skull into the floor with a mace. Trevor winced away from the spatter of ichor, but not before he recognized the weapon that caused it.

_Oh shit. I know that mace._

His uncle was the only Belmont who used a weapon like that. He’d died from a basilisk bite, but not before he killed the storied snake with that same mace. That he’d then been buried with.

Trevor kept on moving. Some of his soldier kin had forged ahead and fights were breaking out between Belmonts and creatures of the night in every passage, hall and alcove. A ghost of a woman with a glaive like his grandmother’s speared a vampire that blocked his path to a stairwell. A broadsword swung by a rotting one-armed former-man that might have been his cousin decapitated another that tried to take Trevor’s whip. He took it all in stride and just hoped he wasn’t going to run into his father at some point.

All in all, the Belmonts were a vicious well-armed bunch and he was grateful. Some of them had spent their lives searching for this place they were now conquering back from vampires. It was a fitting end for them. And Trevor felt a strange pride in being the one who’d brought it on. Pride in his heritage was not a thing he was used to feeling and it seemed like an eternity ago that he roamed the land hiding his crest beneath a cloak and denying he was a Belmont at all.

Also strange that it was Dracula’s son who had a hand in leading Trevor to where he was now, determined to claim his home, prideful in his name and every bit a bloodthirsty Belmont.

~

If the rivers of his blood streaking the corridor were any indication, Trevor wasn’t going to make it in time before Adrian succumbed to unconsciousness again.

He swung the short sword in a wide, unsteady arc, missed, and Carmilla was able to get past him before Hector could recover from her last attack. She rushed forward and pinned the man against the wall so swiftly it knocked the Morning Star from his grasp.

The human struggled as she laughed and for a moment it seemed like she might play with him a little, having gained the upper hand once again with Trevor’s whip far out of Hector’s reach, but when he snarled defiantly and spit in her face, Adrian knew he had to find a way to get her off him before she tore his jugular right out with her fangs, forgemaster pet be damned.

Adrian flipped Trevor’s sword in his hand and he aimed to throw it at her back like a knife but before he could, a giant creature emerged from the dark end of the hall. It lashed out, _with a whip,_ at all three of them.

Carmilla nearly lost the arm that she held Hector against the wall with and he fell, just able to roll away from a second whiplash that caught Adrian in the shoulder as he tried to twist out of it’s range.

Carmilla retreated a few steps to see what it was that had interrupted their three-way deathmatch while Hector scrambled for the Morning Star.

“Hector,” Adrian said the forgemaster’s name as he too looked up at the demon towering above them. The thing was more a shadow than actual matter, a thick cloud of darkness swirled into the vague form of a man. Along with the whip, it held a short sword. “What the hell is…”

Adrian didn’t even finish before Hector denied the implication vehemently. “I did not resurrect _that_ …”

Seeing that perhaps the greatest threat to her now was not a badly damaged human and a dhampir who’d lost so much blood he could barely stand, Carmilla decided to attack the demon. She charged, blocked a stab of its sword, jumped and then spun trying to get behind the massive fiend but it caught her by the neck with an expert flick of its whip.

Her bag of tricks wasn’t empty yet though and when it tried to yank her in she shapeshifted, right in the air, transforming into a huge black cat, sleek and limber enough to slip through the whip’s coils. She landed on her feet, feline fangs bared, icy blue eyes glowing and she hissed. When the creature reared its spectral arm back to strike again with the whip, however, she turned and ran, as fast as her panther hindquarters could carry her, and she disappeared into the depths of the castle.

Which left Hector and Adrian at the mercy of a demon he didn’t forge that seemed to be out for blood, _any blood,_ at all costs. Since strategic retreat wasn’t an option for either of them, Hector gathered up the Morning Star and Adrian swallowed down the pain of the fire in his hand as he lifted Trevor’s sword against their new opponent.

A deep, low, ominous sound emanated from the beast that Adrian could only interpret as grotesque laughter. It lifted the whip in its hand again, ready to strike at both of them, but when they readied their blessed Belmont weapons in defense, suddenly, the creature stopped cold.

The three of them stood there, frozen in fighting stances, weapons lifted and not one of them moved an inch. Hector was panting, his scant reserves of willpower likely spent and each breath Adrian exhaled came out wet with the blood that was fast filling his lungs. The demon’s laughter turned into a roar of seemingly powerless malcontent.

All that could be heard for too many tense seconds to count was labored breathing and malicious growling until, from behind the creature, help arrived.

Loud, pounding footsteps, magic emanating in waves and the characteristic sounds of supernatural beings rushed towards where Hector and Adrian stood at odds with their odd demon opponent, staring at it, while it stared back at them.

“There! _There!”_ Adrian heard Sypha shout and her melodic voice was like a choir of angels to his ears. And then finally, _finally,_ the one voice he’d been waiting to hear for what seemed like an age swore a mean streak at everyone and everything present.

“Oh shit! Wait! You! The big one! Back the fuck away, _right now!_ Do not kill _him!_ ”

Amazingly, the demon lowered its sword and its whip and it stepped aside as ordered clearing a path for Trevor who strode down the hall with Sypha and Isaac at his sides and more demons at his back, all of them holding an unbelievable and varied array of weapons.

Adrian blinked and tried to speak but his throat was too dry. He’d lost far too much blood to believe he was seeing things properly. He dropped Trevor’s sword, swayed perilously and would have fallen to his knees if Trevor hadn’t caught him in one strong arm.

“Whoa...I’ve got you.” Trevor lowered them both down to the floor and his first words were of reassurance, but then he saw the state Adrian was in. _“Jesus fucking Christ,_ Adrian... _shit!_ ”

Trevor’s hand came up to cradle the back of his neck and rough fingertips slid up into his hair. Adrian hadn’t realized how cold he’d felt, or how deeply in extremis he was until just now, as Trevor’s body heat rolled off in waves and blanketed him in soothing warmth.

Adrian gave in to the comfort of it and a shroud seemed to fall across the walls surrounding them, the floor beneath them, the demons, the forgemasters and the one brave magician in their company until everything but Trevor disappeared away. He closed his eyes, and even Trevor’s voice at that point grew indistinct until only one sound made it through to him.

It was the beating of Trevor’s heart.

Like thunder, it rolled into Adrian’s head and captured all of his attention, slow and distant, then closer, louder. The pumping of the man’s blood, the rush of it flowing, the life of it pulsing, throbbing and throbbing, pushed every other perception out of his mind. The mild warmth of Trevor’s embrace accelerated like a forest fire into blazing flames and from behind his closed eyes, Adrian almost thought he could see the ribbons of his vasculature glow in invitation.

And he could smell it now, Trevor’s blood, heady and sweet, and every hair on Adrian’s body stood on end as if electrified. The sharp and tempting scent of it invaded his nose and magnified the all-consuming, unbearable, unendurable _hunger_ that he’d been trying to ignore.

Without consciously making his limbs move, some animalistic force now drove his muscles, and Adrian suddenly felt cloth and leather clutched between his fingers. The blackness that had shrouded his vision was drawn away revealing a palette of nothing but bright red. His lips slid along skin slick with sweat, the tip of his nose nuzzled against rough stubble, his fangs plunged deeply into yielding flesh and the hot, rich, life-giving blood of his lover poured into his mouth.

~

There was nothing Trevor could have done to stop it. He dared not admit to himself that he might _not_ have stopped it even if he could have.

One moment Adrian was falling into his arms and the next, just as Trevor was about to panic over the state of him, he _changed._

The transformation from wounded man to untamed animal was extraordinary in its completeness. Adrian’s eyes went wild in the span of seconds, but not even like when he was a wolf, they went wild with something clearly uncontrollable. Some predatory instinct grabbed hold of him, and grabbed hold of Trevor, literally. Refinement, respect, consideration, _humanity_ , all of it disappeared when Adrian pulled Trevor down by his tunic and, without the permission he held in such sanctity when he was in his right mind, in front of everyone and everything in the dark hallway they were gathered in, Adrian bit him.

Trevor gasped and cried out in shock when Adrian’s fangs penetrated him this time. There was no tenderness in it, no gentle preparation, just fierce need and domination. Adrian had him in a vice grip, his hands having come up to crane his neck back and hold his head in place as he fed from him like a starved beast…

 _No,_ Trevor corrected himself, _not like a beast._ _Like a vampire._

Adrian offered him no pause, no consideration, no quarter. It was savage and painful and relentless and there was no possible way Trevor could escape.

There was also no possible way for Trevor to deny that he didn’t want to.

Everything in his head cleared away but that _exquisite_ pain. He was transported to a new space and time he’d never experienced before, never even knew existed, where there was only the two of them, only Adrian and Trevor and the tangled blood drenched chains binding them.

Never in his life had he allowed himself to be this exposed, this vulnerable, at the mercy of a fucking vampire drinking his blood and yet, without question, he trusted this man. He trusted him with his body, his blood, his life, so he let him drink his fill. And he selfishly let himself get lost in surrender to the pain. It was the kind of pain he would remember, the kind that would linger in his very psyche, and he knew the memories of it would come back to him in an instant whenever called forth and they would bring along with them the tangible, visceral feelings all over again. Adrian’s fangs invading, his fingers gripping, his tongue lapping, hungry, swollen lips pressed to skin and hearts pumping in sync.

 _Fucking hellfire and God Almighty take him,_ he was being devoured, and he loved it. _Loved it_ like he’d never loved anything. Had he even known what the fuck love was before this? Empty words, small words, words so tiny and insignificant as to not adequately fucking capture the mind-shattering bliss of Adrian’s mouth on him, like this.

Trevor’s breath started its telltale quickening, and his heart raced away. His skin tingled and his mouth went dry. He heard himself moan. It was a needy, wanton sound and Adrian responded with a moan of his own against Trevor’s neck as he continued to suck.

 _Shit. Shit!_ There was no way out of this. _Shit!_ Trevor felt an all too familiar _and mortifying_ fucking urgency at the very core of him. It unfurled in his gut and it ached for release. _Shit shit shit!_ Suddenly the pain wasn’t enough to sate him, he wanted more, so much more of this, so much more of Adrian, but _fucking shit,_ not here, not now!

“Adrian…” It was a weak and parched whisper, but he managed to get out Adrian’s name. When it didn’t get through to him though, his assault continuing, Trevor summoned every ounce of self-control, _and dignity,_ he had left in him and he tried again, with the intensity and seriousness of an order.

“Adrian! That’s enough, _stop!”_

Without taking one more drop of blood, Adrian released him as if dragged back by an invisible leash. They sat there, still in each other’s arms, on the floor, breathless and they just stared as if drunk and dazed, Trevor’s dilated blue eyes, into Adrian’s wild gold ones.

Trevor’s blood ran down the other man’s face and his mouth hung open indecently, fangs exposed. He looked at Trevor like he was the only thing in the world that would satisfy his monstrous hunger. The weight of it, the gravity of it, was at once frightening and empowering. The sight of the indomitable Alucard thirsty and stricken was the most _fucking ravishing_ thing Trevor had ever seen, and it was in the most _inappropriate fucking setting_ imaginable.

It took a mighty fucking effort, but Trevor shook off the fever of perverted arousal that had taken him, _had taken them both_. He made no attempt to separate from Adrian, but he did finally fully inspect his injuries.

His pale skin seemed to have brightened into a more normal color, for him at least, than a few moments ago and there was a faint flush in his cheeks. There was a small cut on his shoulder that was closing quickly, now that he’d fed, and a burn on his flank that also went from red and irritated to smooth and normal in a matter of seconds. The worst of it was a stab wound in his gut and though it too mended itself right before Trevor’s eyes, there was a thin line of pink that remained.

It seemed Adrian had acquired a new scar.

When his breathing settled and the distress of his hunger receded enough to let conscious thought back into his head, Adrian spoke. He sounded uncertain, almost fearful. “Trevor...I…are you…” His gaze went to Trevor’s neck and his fingers reached up hesitantly to touch the puncture wounds there.

Trevor grabbed Adrian’s hand and redirected his gaze back up to his face before he could descend into misplaced and unnecessary guilt. “Don’t fucking worry about me, I’m fine. Are _you_ alright? You were stabbed. I fucking felt it… _wait...holy shit!”_

Trevor suddenly realized what must have happened. He looked at Adrian’s new scar and then he looked around and saw his short sword, _his sanctified Belmont short sword,_ on the floor, covered in blood.

Fury made Trevor’s vision blur as he looked from the sword back to Adrian. He didn’t need to ask, but asking fueled his rage. And rage was a lot more fucking useful at the moment than sadness or regret.

_“Did that fucking cunt stab you with my sword?”_

Adrian moved in closer. Fangs still bared, he darted his tongue out and licked Trevor’s blood from their pointed tips. He narrowed the space that separated them even more, until they were practically sharing breath, lips nearly touching.

In a low, dangerous growl, that, had Trevor been anyone else, might have made him piss himself in terror at the sound of it, Adrian answered him slowly and with homicidal intent.

 _“That fucking cunt is done for._ But first…”

Then, with no preamble, no warning, and no hiding, _Adrian kissed him._

Unabashed, unashamed and _right the fuck in front of everyone,_ he kissed him. Trevor’s whole body tensed and his first instinct was to push away, but Adrian held him firmly, kissed him deeply and then he breathed a soft, sincere, _'Thank you love’,_ against his lips as he lightly, gratefully, grazed the bite marks at Trevor’s neck with his thumb.

And just like that, the last Belmont fell. It couldn’t exactly be called a fall from grace, because grace wasn’t a word in his vocabulary, but he fell nonetheless, and as he careened into the unknown, in front of his only fucking friend and his entire dead fucking family, he decided there was _no fucking end_ to all the things he just didn’t have it in him to give a damn about anymore, including this, so he kissed Adrian right back.


	14. Father's Son

Adrian smiled into Trevor’s kiss. Perhaps it was neither the time nor place for indulging in a romantic gesture but it was quite the revelation that biting Trevor like a starved animal, without consideration for his comfort or enjoyment, had nearly brought the man to orgasm. It was definitely something they would have to experiment more with later on but, for now, a brief kiss would have to suffice.

His hopes for a few more selfish seconds were dashed, however, when the demon with the whip and the sword approached them. Adrian immediately broke away and stood to face the thing, now that he was back in fighting form and capable of dealing with it. He held Trevor behind him with a hand on his shoulder to keep him seated on the floor so he wouldn’t stand up too quickly. In addition to not bothering with comfort or enjoyment, Adrian hadn’t bothered with restraint either and he feared he’d taken too much for Trevor to defend himself effectively.

The demon loomed, taller even than Adrian, and it stared at them both, but, as before, it did not act. Adrian took a step forward and he was unable to stop that animal in him from baring his fangs in a show of aggression.

 _“Step back demon.”_ He hissed.

Trevor grunted from the floor and slowly stood, using Adrian’s arm for leverage.

“Put the fucking fangs away, Alucard.” He said as he rested his hand on Adrian’s shoulder, half because he needed to and half to hold him back. “He doesn't want to kill me, I promise.”

“Does it want to kill _me?”_

Trevor shrugged. “Yeah. Probably. But he won’t do that either.”

Adrian eased away from the confrontation and turned to Trevor. “I think it's time you explain these creatures, Belmont.”

Trevor made a strange fatalistic sort of sigh, and he gestured politely at the demon.

“Alucard, meet my father.” And then, to Adrian. “Dad, meet Dracula’s son.”

~

For one brief shining moment, despite the dick-shriveling embarrassment of the past few minutes, Trevor felt victory.

A single flicker of horror slipped past Adrian’s impassivity when he introduced his dead dad and his mouth hung open aghast for the briefest instant. Trevor felt like he’d won their war to see who could make who finally shut the fuck up.

Sadly the triumph of one-uppery was short lived. Adrian gathered back his composure quickly, looked over the demons, then at Trevor and then at _Isaac_.

Sypha spoke before Adrian could though. “Trevor, are you sure this is your...I mean, how can you tell? He’s kind of...well, you can’t really…” She waved her hand up and down at the complete lack of identifying physical features on the monster that looked like something out of the Inferno, nothing but a black void with arms and legs.

“It’s the whip and the sword.” Trevor said. “Just like mine. It’s him. I’ve recognized a few of them now by their weapons. Belmonts usually like to be buried with them. And if we’re not able to be buried then we probably went out while using them. Either way, we make sure we walk into hell armed and ready.”

 _Because everything we ever killed in life will be there waiting for us._ In the case of his dad though, he felt bad for the hellspawn.

“So this is your dead father.” Adrian said, his level-headed monotone back in place. “I presume Isaac resurrected this army to assist you?” Then he answered his own question like the patronizing dick he was. “Clever boy, Belmont, having my father’s forgemaster raise the dead for you. I do believe you _are_ going to hell.”

“I can still order him to kill you, you know.” But his threat had no teeth, so Adrian ignored it.

“While I appreciate the voracity with which you sought to protect me, this seems...a bit much.”

“Hey! Who said it was all for you? This is my home too that bitch is trying to take over.”

“I sealed off the hold. I am the only one who can unseal it.”

“I told you that’s what he did! I was right!” Sypha shouted and wagged her finger, piling on to Trevor’s dressing-down.

He remarked loudly back at both of them. “How the hell was I supposed to get in if you died?” But he added quietly under his breath, trying to keep his next statement reserved only for Adrian and not the rest of their present company, _“And who the hell said I was only talking about the hold?”_

“If we consider the castle as well, I still find it hard to believe that it was necessary to bring even more demons into our home.” Adrian did _not_ bother to say the word ‘our’ under his breath despite their present company.

Trevor was feeling that special kind of mulishness only Adrian could elicit from him so he refused to back down. He poked one finger at the man’s chest and glared at him.

 _“Listen asshole,_ I brought weapons, our friends, and a _fucking_ _army_. _You_ couldn’t even find a _shirt_.”

“You didn’t seem to mind my lack of clothes when…”

 _“Oh bloody hell, shut the fuck up, will you?!_ Can we _not_ do this in front of my fucking family, Alucard?”

“I think they’ve gotten quite an eyeful already, Belmont.”

_“Ugh!” Why the fuck do I even try?_

Trevor closed his eyes and rubbed at the veins that had started to pulse at the corners of his forehead. It was time to go back to fighting. More fighting. Less talking. Always the best answer.

And then, almost as if the fates had finally deigned to give him their blessing, he opened his eyes and saw his Morning Star right there on the floor.

“Ah! There you are, darling, I missed you...” He brushed rudely past Adrian to retrieve his beloved, but Adrian caught his arm.

“Be careful. Are you alright to walk? You’ve lost...I took…” Adrian was suddenly hesitant again at admitting he’d nearly sucked Trevor dry. His concern was...sweet? But unnecessary. It was unnecessary for several reasons, many of which Trevor didn’t really want to dwell on right now, but mostly because he felt fine, so he interrupted to that effect.

“Not a problem. I’m fine.”

But Adrian still held onto him. “I don’t think…”

“A little blood loss isn’t enough to put me out of commission. Remember this all started with me showing up here after bleeding my way across the country. And still managing to stay alive.” It was then he noticed who it was standing over the Morning Star, being practically held up by Isaac. _“No thanks to this asshole!”_

Trevor was about tell his dad to kill Hector but Adrian read his mind and interrupted the murder. Although, really, anyone could have probably read his mind just then, even without the history of blood consumption.

“Trevor, Hector and I have been working together against Carmilla. She had manipulated him to the point where he was not in his right mind.”

“Well is he in his right fucking mind now? Because I want him to be cold fucking sober when I kill him…”

But Trevor never got to kill him because Adrian knew how to sweet talk him.

“Recruiting Hector to our side is a large humiliation for Carmilla. I assure you she was incensed by the fact that he was fighting with me. Killing him would be counterproductive to punishing her for her insolence in coming here. And he has been quite respectful with your weapon.”

Trevor retrieved said weapon and slung it on his belt while continuing to stare daggers at Hector, who continued to be silently held up by Isaac. The weight of the metal chain against his hip was practically as good as Adrian’s kiss.

“Did he hit you with it again?” He asked, still a little sullen about his unclaimed revenge.

Hector opened his mouth to speak, but Adrian quickly answered for him. “Perhaps once or twice before we got away from Carmilla. It was ineffective at damaging me. You are likely the only one who can use that weapon to its maximal effect.”

Trevor knew when someone was blowing smoke up his ass, so now he was suspicious. “And how’d you manage to get away from Carmilla in the first place _and_ bring him to his senses?”

Hector didn’t even try to answer that one. And neither did Adrian.

“We waste time here. We should find Carmilla and end this.”

Since Trevor actually agreed with that, he let Adrian’s shamelessly obvious subject change go, but he was only letting him off the hook temporarily. He faced him and poked his finger at his chest again. “There’s a story there, that I’m going to hear about when we’re done. But yeah, right now, time to go.”

Trever checked himself, checked his weapons, checked his friends and then gave out his orders. “Isaac, you help your dumb fucking friend down stairs and outside. It’s going to get ugly in here and he looks like shit. Take my dad and the rest of the Belmonts with you for protection in case we left any stragglers behind. And while you’re out there, _Forgemasters,_ maybe start trying to think of ways to get the Belmonts _back in the fucking ground_ since you’re so good at raising things up out of it.”

Trevor had been the last Belmont for a long time now and he really had no desire to change that and share this place with his half-vampire boyfriend _and_ his dad.

Both Isaac and Hector nodded and turned to leave, Belmonts in tow.

“Sypha, you’re with me and Adrian. We took out Dracula with just the three of us. Taking down this bitch should be like swatting a fucking fly.”

Sypha too nodded her acknowledgement and she smiled, big and broad. She looked like she was itching to say something, but she held her tongue until the demons and forgemasters had gone and it was just the three of them in the hallway.

Then she pounced.

She practically leapt from where she was standing and gathered the two of them up into a hug.

Adrian let out a soft, helpless grunt and stood there, motionless, enduring it. Trevor tried to extract himself, but it only made her squeeze them tighter.

 _“Oh God,_ Sypha, come on.” He complained.

She kept them trapped for another few seconds but kept her mouth blessedly shut, with the exception of a satisfied coo, and then she relented. She clapped them both once on the shoulder, surprisingly forcefully.

“Okay you two. Time to clean up your house.” Her grin this time was both happy and evil.

“Alright good.” Trevor said and he issued more orders. “Adrian, you lead and keep going until we find Carmilla. I’ll keep whatever attacks us off you. Sypha, burn anything that gets past me.”

Sypha held her hands at the ready and ignited fire between her fingers. Adrian walked a few steps ahead of them and then transformed into a wolf. But instead of leading the way, he turned to face Trevor and just stood there, looking up at him. When Trevor didn’t do anything, _because he knew where this was fucking going,_ Adrian jerked his snout up, shook his head and presented his ears.

 _“What are you waiting for?_ ” Trevor spoke to the wolf reluctantly, through clenched teeth. _“Let’s go.”_

Adrian stubbornly repeated the same motions and his ears twitched expectantly.

Trevor stubbornly repeated his refusal. “Uh-uh. _No_. Let’s go.”

Sypha raised an eyebrow and looked back and forth between the two of them, but again, thankfully, she said nothing.

Another long minute passed with not one movement from Adrian other than another ear twitch.

 _“Oh my god,_ I hate you. _Fine.”_ Trevor gave in and scratched his ears. _“There._ Are you happy now, you damned mut? Can we go?”

Adrian howled in success. Sypha giggled. Trevor silently cursed them both and then, they were off.

~

There was something special about spilling blood with one’s closest friends.

Carmilla transforming into a cat made it even easier for Adrian to track her as a wolf. She’d left a trail of her scent up towards the very top of the castle so, that was where they headed.

In a narrow stairwell, Adrian jumped over a vampire that had gone low with a spear to try and pierce him, only to have Trevor cut down with his sword to strike a beheading blow.

In an open arcade, Trevor swung the Morning Star widely ahead of them at a line of horned demons blocking their way. Half their enemy exploded on contact with a sulfur smell and flung body parts. Sypha incinerated the rest with a white hot ball of fire that chased them down as they tried to escape.

The blood of their enemies drenched Adrian’s fur and their clothes. It soaked the walls and ran in rivers down the flagstones. Both they and the castle seemed to absorb it all, take it in, feed on it and it made them stronger.

Adrian hadn’t sought this. He would not have invited in this violence. But if he’d inadvertently started this by leaving himself open to it, then he was happy to fucking finish it.

They fought in unison and danced to the tunes of each other. Sypha’s song was fearless and independent. Trevor’s was bold and determined.

“Adrian, get back!” Sypha yelled but Trevor was there to knock him out of the way of a flying ice shard she’d let loose at a creature behind him. While Trevor recovered, Adrian chomped down on the arm of another enemy who made a grab at Trevor’s tunic. And then, when a vampire made a dive for Sypha from above, Adrian transformed back into himself to pull her clear while Trevor snagged it with his whip and tore it apart with a flick of his wrist.

“She is just ahead, outside on the battlements.” Adrian led them through to an exterior door and he opened it into the night.

When Carmilla slammed into him from the side, the door ripped off its hinges and tumbled with them across one of the castles massive rooftops.

They landed, cracking the stone beneath them and she rolled until she was on top. She brazenly tried to bite at Adrian’s neck. He pulled at a fistful of her long hair and wrenched her back then he pulled again and tossed her away. She skidded backwards across the flagstones. Adrian stood and let the clump of her hair he’d ripped out fall from his fingers. Trevor and Sypha came to stand beside him. Sypha held up her fire and Trevor held up his whip.

“Her horde is coming up behind us.” Trevor said, never taking his eyes from Carmilla who had also gotten back on her feet.

“And in front of us.” Sypha added and she jerked her head at the far stone battlement walls where demons were climbing over to join their mistress.

Everyone just paused there, collecting themselves and calculating.

“What are we waiting for people?” Trevor said impatiently and he pulled the chain of his whip tight.

Adrian wasn’t thrilled about having to admit to his folly at the hands of Carmilla’s deception, but he had to warn them.

“We must be careful. She drank my blood earlier. She will not be as easy to kill as you think.”

 _“She drank your blood?”_ Trevor asked, incredulous. “You mention this _now? Jesus fucking Christ,_ what the hell happened in here while I was gone?”

Much like Adrian had earlier, Trevor let his emotions make the first move and he whipped the Morning Star right at her. She dodged it, and the fight began.

Trevor moved to attack Carmilla again but he got tied up with a group of flying demons that descended on him in a swarm. Sypha hurried to help him and Adrian went after Carmilla. In one step, he phased forward, right up to her face and landed a satisfying jab to her nose. She was able to duck away from his next uppercut and slip behind him.

He spun and she laughed.

“Look at you!” She cackled. “So slow.” And she swiped at his chest with her claws. He jumped back out of her reach.

She continued to taunt him. “You could have been a great power among our kind, Alucard. _But no._ You decided to think with your _fucking_ dick instead, just like every other man.”

This time he phased to the space behind her and kicked her square in the back. She flew across the chaos of fighting to slam into the battement wall. She hit with such force that part of it crumbled away.

Sypha saw an opening and tried to charge at her with fire but a vampire intercepted her and she had to break off her attack to get away. Trevor took up where she left off and swung his whip but the weighted end landed only on the crumbled stone as Carmilla side stepped out of reach. She then tried to attack Trevor but Adrian tackled her down before she could reach him. They struggled on the ground and she spit at him.

“You’re a disgrace.” She growled as they grappled. “Consorting with humans. Shitting where you eat. Brought low by this chattel just like your crazy fucking father!”

Adrian flipped them to expose Carmilla’s side. Trevor was there waiting to stab his sword right into her flank.

She yelped in pain. There was a searing hiss and a spurt of her blood from the wound as Trevor pulled his blade free. Adrian kicked her away and Trevor helped him up. Carmilla staggered to her feet clutching her side. When she lifted her hand though, they all saw what Adrian feared.

The wound closed right before their eyes and Carmilla laughed again.

“Ugh.” Trevor grunted and looked at Adrian accusingly. “You and your fucking magic blood.”

Carmilla had another accusation for him. “You have power like none other right at your fingertips.“ She seethed. “When I think of all that could be possible with this castle and your fucking blood and how it was all wasted on your father and now it's all going to waste on _you._ I won’t sit by and watch that happen. I’m going to take this fucking castle and kill your fucking humans. And then I’m going to fucking drain you dry.”

She lunged in a flash and, before Trevor or Adrian could react, she had one of her sharp-clawed hands at Adrian’s throat. She leaned into him until they were face to face and she snarled.

_“Your human half makes you weak.”_

~

Trevor raised his sword and was ready to sever Carmilla’s arm that had Adrian by the throat but he stopped in shock and confusion when Adrian started _laughing_.

It was that low, deep laugh of his and he kept it soft, like any other sound would be beneath him, like anything less controlled would be undignified. He laughed and he smiled, sharp fangs and all, and he reached up to grab Carmilla’s wrist at his neck but he didn’t bother with trying to pull her away.

Trevor lowered his sword and took a step back. Something was wrong. Something in the air was changing. He noticed the flex of muscles in the arms of Carmilla and Adrian as they held onto each other but he couldn’t tell who was struggling against who.

Trevor felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Sypha. He looked at her and it was obvious she too felt the ominous turn in the atmosphere.

“Trevor, _get back._ Look...”

As she guided him away from Adrian and Carmilla, he saw what she wanted him to see. All the other vampires and demons had stopped fighting and they were backing away as well. By the time a vacant circle had formed around the two fighting over control of Dracula’s castle, the night sky had started to turn a foreboding shade of red. The dark color came across the moon like a veil. The clouds dissipated. The mountains and countryside in the distance blotted out until all that was left was the silhouette of the castle and those locked in conflict atop it.

Adrian’s laughter changed then. It seemed to spread and infect the air and the stone and the very minds of everyone present. Some of the demons covered their ears. Even Sypha winced but Trevor thought the sound and the feeling of it surrounding him was _absolutely fucking wonderful._ Dangerously, menacingly, wonderful.

When Adrian spoke, the words came not just from his mouth but from everywhere at once and the castle itself felt like it vibrated with his voice.

_“You think me weak?”_

Each syllable thundered, and each brief pause of emphasis boomed.

Carmilla’s face twisted in rage and it almost looked like she was going to start fighting back again but she wasn’t given the opportunity.

One moment Adrian stood atop his castle, holding onto Carmilla. The next, his eyes turned as red as the sky and his form changed. In a burst of fluttering wings, Adrian disappeared and in his place a cloud of bats emerged and scattered.

Hundreds of them, thousands of them filled the sky, swirling and sweeping in great black swaths of bloodthirsty screeching.

Trevor and Sypha covered their heads on instinct but none of the throng touched them. They reveled in the red sky for only a few seconds more before they focused their flight and swarmed Carmilla.

Not much could be seen of her through the bats’ attack after that. A flash of red or a streak of white as she frantically tried to protect herself from being torn apart and bitten to pieces.

None of her army moved to help her, they just looked on, like Sypha and Trevor, as she cursed and shouted.

Slowly, it started to look as if she was being backed towards the battlement wall. Trevor noticed she was leaving puddles of blood in her wake and amidst the screeching he could hear the wet and sickening sounds of tearing flesh.

And then just as quickly as the cloud materialized, it coalesced into a single black cluster in front of a barely standing Carmilla. It dissipated with one last flutter of wings and gave way to the form of Adrian once again.

He stood calmly and the red sky started to clear into a dark grey. He flexed his fingers and stretched his neck as relaxed as if he were doing anything but fighting to the death with a mortal enemy.

Carmilla tried to gather herself and advance but Adrian strode forward, turned the tables and grabbed her up by the throat with one hand.

He held her at arms length and walked right to the edge of the rooftop. He stepped to the very edge, and just suspended her out in the empty space, over a miles’ long fall to the earth far below them.

And then he waited.

Sypha looked around at the demons and vampires.

“Trevor...what is he waiting for? What’s going on?”

As soon as the vampires started shrinking back into the shadows of the castle’s walls, clinging to the safety of darkness to be found there, he knew.

“Look at the sky, Sypha.” Trevor said and then they both watched as Adrian ended the battle once and for all.

First, the dark grey turned to purple and then to a crimson that was almost still black. From that color, emerged an orange like autumn leaves and then finally, slowly, painfully slowly, one single ray of blinding yellow crested the horizon.

Carmilla screamed.

Trevor had heard lots of dying screams in his life. Mournful ones, terrified ones, pleading ones. Carmilla’s dying scream, as she realized the sun was rising behind her was the most chilling thing Trevor had ever heard. He would never forget that sound. Nor would he ever forget the sight of Adrian, holding her by the neck in one hand, his features hard and ruthless as he served her up to the dawn, knowing he was immune to it.

Helplessly she flailed in Adrian’s grasp. Pointlessly she struggled. Trevor watched as the expanding sunlight turned the tips of her fingers to ash even as she tried to claw at Adrian’s hand around her neck. Trevor refused to blink lest he miss one second of her pale skin burning into cinders as she kicked and wailed.

It took longer than he thought it would for her to burn. Maybe it was Adrian’s blood in her that kept her alive a while longer than would have normally been possible. Trevor found it funny that the blood she probably thought would make her stronger was actually prolonging her agony. At the horrified looks of Sypha, and all the vampires hiding in the shadows, he decided to not be an asshole for a change and held in his amusement.

Eventually the show came to a close though and Carmilla ended as she’d begun in her human life, as they’d all began.

“Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.” Trevor whispered the verse, and he smiled as he watched Adrian open his hand and let the dust that had been Carmilla blow away from his fingers on the wind.

Adrian turned then and something struck Trevor like lightning as he watched the man walk back to him. Sunlight framed him. A breeze caught his hair, practically the same shade as the brightest part of the dawn. He licked at his fangs, bared for all to see, and he looked over at Trevor. His eyes were still red, but slowly the color receded, leaving behind the familiar, otherworldly gold.

If Trevor were smarter, or better, or more worthy, he was sure he could think of something to say or do right then, but, as he was, he was utterly speechless. It hurt his head to even think about putting to words whatever it was he felt in that moment, so he retreated from the light and readied his weapons to complete the job of defending his home.

“Come on Sypha. Let’s finish cleaning up.” There were vampires yet to be killed and demons yet to be banished. Adrian had done the heavy lifting. The least he could do was sweep away what remained.

But, before he could put the cowering vampires out of their misery, and before the sun could get to them, Adrian stopped Trevor with a gentle touch at his elbow.

“No, Trevor. Leave them.”

“Uh...what?” Trevor wasn’t expecting that, but he obeyed and stayed his hand.

Adrian walked over to the vampires in the shadows, and when he addressed them, Trevor heard a distinct change in his voice. What had always sounded stoic, now sounded impassioned as he issued an impassioned directive.

“I am Adrian _Alucard_ Tepes.” He announced to them. “And _I_ am the master of this castle. _Now go,_ all of you. Leave this place and tell of what you saw here. Make sure there are none who do not know what happens when someone dares to challenge me or those I love.”

Trevor narrowed his eyes and he scratched at the start of a beard on his face from having not shaved in days. He turned to Sypha and whispered. “Uh...is he talking about _me?”_

She growled in exasperation, which sounded a lot like Adrian actually, and she punched him, _hard,_ in his arm. “Well, he’s not talking about me you oaf!”

The vampires slunk back inside the keep and what remained of the demons launched and scattered into the sky heading west to escape the rapidly rising sun. When it was just the three of them again, Adrian’s shoulders slumped and Trevor watched his chest fall in a long exhale.

“Of course I was talking about you, you absolute moron.” Adrian grumbled, then he looked up at his castle and he continued softly. “After all this...it seems I am nothing but my father’s son. So, yes, I love you. _You._ I love _Trevor Fucking Belmont._ Thankfully, though, loving you in particular, makes all the difference in the world.”


	15. Pride's Surrender

_Why does shit always end up like this?_

It was a legitimate question to ask, Trevor thought, as he looked across the entry hall of the castle from the top of the grand staircase.

There were some dead demon... _parts_ on the floor. And quite a few piles of dead vampire... _dust? Ashes?_ Whatever. They were dead. And a general smell of burnt and dead... _things_. All three of them were filthy, Trevor was certain that he especially smelled bad and they’d tracked a trail of gore and stink behind them all the way down through the castle from the roof. Then they carefully stepped around the messy aftermath in the foyer and went outside, where they found...more dead and evil things.

Or specifically, Trevor’s _un_ dead family and two devil forgemasters.

Trevor kicked at what looked like a shard of bone on the ground that still had a bit of flesh stuck to it. “I could really use a drink.” He said to no one in particular.

“I...think I agree. For once.” Adrian said from behind him, his attention very obviously fixated on the demon who had once been Trevor’s father and who was standing motionless in the shadows of the manor ruins with the rest of the former hunters. The elder Belmont didn’t exactly have eyes but, quite unsettlingly actually, he still seemed to be staring right back at Adrian.

Isaac approached them. “The job is done then? We could hear the screaming even from down here. We also saw several vampires escape and go to ground as the sun began to rise.”

Adrian nodded. “The job is done. And those vampires are of no concern. They are not likely to return.”

“Pfft, that’s an understatement.” Trevor added.

Isaac appeared satisfied at the resolution of things. “Good. That is the natural order, is it not? For princes to one day take the seats of their kings. And for sons to follow in the footsteps of their fathers.”

Trevor looked over at _his_ father. _“Fucking Christ,_ I hope not. And speaking of which…” He waved his hand at the Belmonts. “Have you two figured this out yet?”

“The sun’s coming up fast now, Trevor.” Sypha frowned. “Maybe we should bring everyone back into the castle while we decide what to do with... _them?”_ She whispered the last word behind her hand as if she didn’t want to sound like she was being rude to the _fucking mindless zombies._

“Must we?” Adrian asked disdainfully. Which earned him another frown from Sypha.

Hector spoke up and, to Trevor’s surprise, he looked a little better than he had inside. Perhaps Carmilla’s death was enough to clear away the last of whatever enthrallment had obviously been sucking away the man’s soul in addition to whatever blood she’d sucked out of him.

“I’m sorry Belmont but once a life has been reforged, the deed cannot be undone unless you wish to murder it.”

‘Murder’ struck Trevor as an unnecessarily harsh word to use for beings that had already died once but there was something in Hector’s tone that made it sound like he felt differently. And not only that, he actually had a non-murder alternative to offer.

“It is possible to let them rest, however, in a way. I could bind them to the hold, where they would be able to sleep peacefully until needed.”

“Needed for _what?”_ Sypha asked.

It amazed Trevor that someone so fucking scary could be so naive sometimes.

Hector answered her. “They were called forth to defend this place. They can be given a new purpose, a new life, to do so again if the need arises.”

 _“When_ the need arises.” Trevor and Isaac spoke in unison to correct Hector’s statement.

It looked like he and Isaac were both equally cynical sons of bitches. Though Trevor preferred to think of it as being realistic. At least they had that in common.

Sypha quickly latched on to the idea. “So then, Adrian, if you remove your ward, the Belmonts could serve as the hold’s protectors instead?”

“I will remove my ward.” Adrian said. “But what to do with the Belmonts is Trevor’s decision.”

The only decision Trevor wanted to be making right now was which vintage to pull from the wine cellar. Adrian had even agreed. But, ultimately, there would be no rest for him either if he didn’t put his family back to rest somehow. He didn’t want to be _that_ bad a Belmont. So, he gave Hector his blessing.

“Not that there’s much of a choice, but yeah, do it.”

It would have been better if their eternal sleep had never been interrupted in the first place, but Belmonts can’t be choosers.

Hector smiled. It was a genuine and innocent looking smile, and it made Trevor wonder how someone like him had found the path he had in life. “Thank you. And you, Alucard, thank you, for everything _._ For what it’s worth, I am sorry. And I’m grateful I can be of use here.”

Trevor almost said something rude but the man was looking him right in the eyes and, after being enslaved to a bat-shit crazy vampire for almost a year, he couldn’t bring himself to debase the poor sod further. It was a rare thing for men to look each other in the eyes so he respected the gesture for the olive branch it was.

“Just get started already.” Trevor may not have wanted to humble him any more but he also didn’t really care to make him feel absolved of his previous crimes. He’d have to find his own penance in life. Just like everyone else.

Hector accepted their unspoken truce and did not push for forgiveness. He got to work immediately, which Trevor also respected.

“I will need my forging hammer.”

“All of your tools have been left untouched inside the castle.” Adrian said.

While Hector and Isaac went back in to fetch what was needed, Sypha and Adrian started walking over to the hold. Trevor dragged his weary feet along after them, but what he saw as they approached made him quicken his pace to get a better look. He was taken aback. Where there should have been a gaping hole that led to the broken remnants of a staircase and his family’s archives deep underground, there was instead packed earth and a new hearthstone as if nothing had ever been disrupted.

Adrian and Sypha walked right up to the stone and crouched beside it. They started some discussion about weird magic shit. Even had Trevor been capable of participating in their conversation, he was too thrown to even listen.

_Did Adrian really fix this?_

The only answer was: of course he had. And Trevor hadn’t even bothered to notice. It would never have occurred to him that _Alucard_ might have taken this kind of care to seal the place up again after he and Sypha had gone. He’d half expected to have to repel down there with ropes and wade through the muck and damp of elemental exposure. Instead, there was a new stone door. A new, rune covered stone door.

_He replaced the door I couldn’t open with another fucking door I can’t open._

Trevor laughed in spite of himself. Adrian and Sypha turned around and looked up at him.

“What is it Trevor?” Sypha asked.

Trevor got himself under control. “Nothing. Just open the new magic death door, will you?”

Trevor almost thought Adrian smiled devilishly as he turned back to the stone. He pricked one of his fingers on his fangs and let one drop of his blood fall onto it. As soon as it hit the etched runes, Trevor felt a weight lift off his shoulders that he hadn’t realized was there and the air felt less oppressive somehow.

“The ward is broken.” Adrian said as he stood. “Sypha can show you how to open the hearthstone. _And try to remember the trick this time, Belmont,_ so you can do it by yourself from now on.”

Sypha demonstrated and Trevor committed the _-god damnit all-_ _magic words_ to memory. When the stone disappeared, a staircase revealed itself, descending into the depths of the hold. It was narrow and simply built, but it was there and it served its purpose. Sypha lit the torches that lined the walls with her magic fire and she started walking down.

Adrian moved to follow her, but Trevor stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“Thank you. For this.” He pointed at Adrian’s makeshift construction.

“You left the hold in my care. I could hardly have allowed it to fill with snow and bird droppings.”

“Still. You didn’t have to.”

Adrian looked back at him, silent. His gaze moved from Trevor’s eyes, to his lips, to his chest and his hands, then up again, then away. “You drive me to strange compulsions, Belmont.” As he walked down the stairs, he added, “Perhaps you always have.”

Sypha was already cheerfully reacquainting herself with the place when he and Adrian entered the library. Trevor was about to call out to her when a strong, loud, _whoosh_ of wind blew past him. It was no mere formless breeze. A single coherent black cloud of smoke shot around the open spaces of the hold and through the shelves before it settled over the lectern at the center and then dove into the large index atop it, disappearing into the pages.

No sooner had that first black wisp dissolved than another, and another came down, entering the hold from above, following suit and diving into the book that catalogued the contents of the Belmont legacy.

“Hector has started his work.” Adrian said. “Your family will rest here now.”

It took time and Trevor watched as what he presumed were the souls of the dearly departed Belmonts each enter the library in turn and become one with it.

When the procession finally stopped, Isaac and Hector descended and joined them along with one last soldier. Adrian gave Trevor’s father a wide berth as the giant of a demon who had once been a giant of a man approached the lectern.

“Belmont,” Hector said as he hefted a huge hammer over his shoulder, “this is the last of your guardian host. I will need your assistance to finish and assure that they will come when you call for them in the future.”

Trevor sighed and was already pulling one of his knives before Hector even finished his sentence. “Let me guess,” he drawled, “you need my blood.”

Hector had the decorum to look surprised. “Yes...I...how did you…”

“Always with the fucking blood letting.” Trevor muttered and he cut a line across his palm. “Just tell me what to do with it before I change my mind.”

Hector didn’t need to answer. Trevor’s father held out what would have been his hand if he were still a person and grabbed Trevor’s bleeding one.

Trevor couldn’t decide if this was going to be a moment he would always remember or if it was going to be one he needed to immediately and thoroughly purge from his mind with a strong fucking drink or two, _or ten_.

The demon’s hand was solid somehow, though there was no flesh to speak of. And it was cold. Trevor shivered at the eerie, inhuman contact, and yet, for all the grotesqueness of it, there was something familiar in it too. As he stood there, he thought there might not be enough booze in Dracula’s wine cellars to effectively make him forget a bloody handshake with his dead dad as a devil forgemaster ritually bound him into service for all eternity.

Nonetheless, Trevor held onto his father’s hand until Hector raised his hammer and struck straight through him. With a puff and hiss, the last of the Belmont demons was laid to rest. At least until they were needed again.

Hector let out a long breath from the effort of his work, and swayed on his feet. Isaac steadied him and Adrian spoke up.

“Isaac, I assume the two of you kept rooms of your own in the castle? Go. Rest. It has been a long night. Trevor, you should rest as well.”

Adrian got no arguments from the other men. Trevor, however, lingered for a moment and just stared at the accumulated miscellaneous junk all around them, the collection of generations that his family had held so dear for so long. And now the past Belmonts, who’d assembled this hold in the first place, were literally a part of it, leaving Trevor, once again, the last one standing. What their pride had wrought, they were now bound to, whatever free will they’d once had, surrendered to the last among them. And a wayward son he was at that.

Trevor was suddenly exhausted and a nap sounded too good to resist. All the fighting, all the talking, all the fucking weird and awful shit they’d just been through weighed heavy on him now that they weren’t eyeballs deep in it and, if he dwelled on it too long, it actually would drive him to drink before the sun rose to noon, so he decided to follow Isaac and Hector back to the castle and get some sleep.

~

Adrian watched Trevor just stand there for a moment, quiet and contemplative. When he finally followed the forgemasters back into the castle, Adrian was happy he took the suggestion to rest without argument.

Since Sypha didn’t seem at all tired, Adrian offered to stay with her as she picked through the shelves.

“May I keep you company?”

She closed the book in her hands and smiled at him indulgently. “Don’t worry about me. I’d like to stay down here and explore while I have the opportunity and _you_ should get back to the ‘castle’, don’t you think?”

Adrian ignored her implication but he allowed himself a smile in return. “When you’re ready to sleep, you can go up to the second floor and head into the east wing. The apartments there will have everything you need. You know you may stay as long as you like.”

“I know, thank you Adrian, but I want to get back to my family soon. They won’t have travelled very far yet. Plus, I have _so many_ new stories to share!”

“I think it may serve our purpose this time for you to tell them as a deterrent. I do not wish to be disturbed here by another Carmilla.”

She set the book down, walked over to him and looped her arm through his. She rested her head on his shoulder affectionately. “Even if that happens, you have each other now, so it’ll be fine. And, frankly, I’m happy I won’t have to worry about the two of you anymore.”

Adrian wasn’t so sure. “We may yet kill each other, Sypha. Or...he may just be the death of me.”

She laughed and patted his hand. “No, Adrian, he’s going to make sure you actually live. And you’ll make sure he doesn’t accidentally die.”

“Someone has to, I suppose.”

She laughed again and she looked up at him with her endearing, smug little smirk. “It was only a matter of time you know. You and him.”

“I think...I know that now.” Adrian admitted. “Though it might have been helpful if you’d warned me sooner.”

“Ha! As if either of you would have listened.”

 _“I_ would have listened. I sometimes wonder if his ears even work.”

“Give yourselves time. And remember, he may need more of it than you. This is the first home he’s experienced since he was a child.”

When Sypha said the word ‘home’, however, it sounded like she meant to say another word. Either way, Adrian understood.

“Thank you Sypha.” He said sincerely.

“You should go find him.” She let him go and urged him along.

“Not yet. I want to let him sleep without intruding on his dreams.”

She raised a curious eyebrow. “What does _that_ mean?”

Adrian smiled again as he walked away. “It means it will be a while before I can make him scratch behind my ears again.”

~

Trevor slept like the dead. Still dressed, not bothering to clean up first, not even bothering to take off his shoes, he’d just collapsed into unconsciousness. He even had normal, nonsensical dreams about things like walking into a tavern without his trousers on and eating cake. He did not dream of demanding wolves with furry ears, thirsty vampires with sharp fangs or handsome Adrians with insufferable fucking sass. It was magnificent, restful, black-the-fuck-out sleep and he hadn’t even needed alcohol to get it.

Despite having fallen asleep in the bedroom he was now quite familiar with, he woke disoriented. Since there were no windows in the castle, at least not that he’d yet seen, he was unable to ascertain the time of day. He couldn’t have slept for long though. Adrian wasn’t with him and he was sure that if it had been a while, he would have come back to his bed at some point.

_His bed? Our bed? Fuck, that sounds weird._

Trevor’s definition of ‘normal’ was, understandably, broad. Setting the bar low kept his expectations in check. But whatever life this was he now woke up to, this strange new world that included shared things in a shared space, it was...well, it was where _actual_ normal people set their bar in life. It would take getting used to. For once though, he thought that was fine. Taking the time to get used to something good instead of getting used to the fact that things would never get better was a lot fucking further in life than he’d ever made it before.

He got out of bed and did the first thing that came to his mind. He went to go find Adrian. Before that though, in a small room down the hall, he took the longest piss of his life _-which felt almost as good as the nap he’d just had-_ down a chamber pot that cleared itself out right before his eyes with a flush of clean water. _Clean_ fucking water to wash away his fucking piss. He just shrugged and shook his head. The gross excess of the place didn’t even surprise him anymore and there was no point to getting mad at it since he had no intention of leaving anytime soon. _Or ever._ _Honestly,_ he thought as he walked away from the magic piss pot, _the sun can go right ahead and fuck itself._ He didn’t need to know what time of day it was. This fucking castle was more useful than anything humans had ever contrived and better even than the very outdoors God had crafted.

He ended up having to go outdoors though to find Adrian. He followed the feeling of the man’s presence, looming large not only inside the castle but inside his head. He climbed some stairs, made a few turns and walked up to a rooftop even higher than the one where Carmilla kicked the bucket. Trevor strolled out into a bright sunny day and on a narrow ledge at the extreme top of the castle, sat Adrian, legs dangling, leaning back on his hands and looking up into the sky.

Trevor sat next to him at the edge. He chanced a brief glance down, but when his equilibrium teetered, he looked back up and out, trying to avoid looking at the ground. He scooted closer to Adrian...just in case.

“I guess you’re not scared of heights.” Trevor said as a greeting.

“I can _fly,_ Trevor. I’ve no reason to be.” Adrian turned his face towards him. “And you’ve no reason to be either. I would catch you if you fell.”

If Adrian had more than one meaning in that statement, Trevor set aside addressing it because he noticed Adrian’s normally pale face was an uncharacteristic shade of flushed pink. Tiny freckles had even started to emerge on his cheeks and across his nose.

_Jesus Christ. Fucking freckles._

Trevor swallowed down the lump in his throat and forced away a smile in favor of irritated concern.

“Are you getting _sunburned?”_

Adrian gingerly touched the apples of each of his cheeks. “Mm. Probably. I’ve never particularly enjoyed direct sunlight.”

“Then why are you sitting out here, _in the sun,_ in the dead fucking center of the daylight hours? _And still without a shirt on.”_

“I suppose because _I can._ And in light of recent events, that seems...important.”

“Is...is this going to actually hurt you, because…”

“I’ll be fine, Trevor. My skin may be more sensitive to it than yours is, but sun exposure can’t permanently damage me. In fact, I used to watch the sunset up here with my mother from time to time. There were whole days and nights where she never slept, because she wanted me to live in the daylight as much as in the moonlight. Not to mention, the sunshine was quite a useful haven when I was young and looking to avoid being disciplined by my father.”

The image of a tiny towheaded Adrian running into the sun _-like the devious little shit Trevor just knew he had to have been as a kid-_ to avoid Dracula’s wrath was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever heard of and he laughed out loud. “Only to have your mother eventually find you instead, right?”

Adrian shrugged. “The trials of being a half-breed are many.”

And then Trevor asked a question that sounded a lot more serious than he’d intended. “Ever want to be something else?”

Adrian looked back out at the sky and shook his head. “I want to be nothing other than what I am.”

“Oh come on, we both know that’s bullshit.”

“And you would want to be someone else?”

Trevor threw his hands up in the air. “Of course! I’d fucking want to be a normal, boring person who had no idea about all this supernatural crap! Ever watch normal humans go about their lives when they aren’t under threat of annihilation by a night horde? They’re like pigs in shit! Walking around like the whole world was made just for them. Ignorant fucking pigs in shit. I definitely wouldn’t mind being one of them for a day.”

Adrian scoffed. “We both know _that’s_ bullshit. You’d be bored and looking for trouble inside of an hour.”

“Goes to show what you know about me.” Trevor crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly.

As usual, Adrian pushed at his walls. He turned his body, and swung his legs around. He placed one long leather-clad limb behind Trevor and draped the other across his lap. Rather than feel trapped, though, Trevor felt safer like this. He definitely wasn’t going to fall now. At least not off the castle. Adrian turned Trevor’s head with one hand so they were face to face, giving Trevor a full view of his cocky fucking smirk. And his freckles.

“I know a great deal more about you now than I did one week ago, Belmont. _Or even a few hours ago,_ wouldn’t you say?” Adrian widened his smile and bared his fangs.

Trevor’s heart started pounding in his chest. Heat rose up from his core and spread everywhere inside him from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair. The denial came out before he even really thought about it. _“I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, Alucard.”_

Why deny it though? What was he surrendering by not denying it? It’s not as if he was closing the book on Belmont pride because he lo-... _wanted_ Adrian. He was just rewriting it.

Adrian drew his thumb slowly across Trevor’s bottom lip, then trailed it down his chin, swept over his jawline and found the sensitive bruise on his neck, now twice bitten. Adrian pushed into the sore spot just enough for Trevor to gasp…and remember that place of pain and bliss he’d almost disappeared into at Adrian’s hands.

“Are you certain you don’t remember all the things I’ve learned about you? Because if you don’t then I must not have _fucked_ you good enough. _Or bitten you hard enough._ We should remedy that.” Adrian had crept in closer until he was able to lock his ankles together, his legs now completely encircling Trevor’s waist from the side.

Trevor really didn’t want to wrestle with him at the edge of the castle with a free fall higher than a fucking mountain right next to them, no matter what Adrian said about catching him. At least that was the excuse he told himself to explain why he didn’t bother to move when Adrian dipped his head and pressed the tip of his tongue firmly against the fang marks at his neck.

“I can still taste you, Trevor.” He whispered and his hands reached up into Trevor’s hair. “Can you still feel me on you? _In_ you?”

Trevor bit his tongue and felt his eyes roll up into his head as he closed them. _Of course he could still fucking feel him._ Even if every last shred of his soul was burned away in hellfire, the one thing that would remain of Trevor Belmont for all time would be the feeling of Adrian inside him, _biting him, fucking him._

“Sypha said I needed to give you time. I have nothing _but_ time, Trevor. And I know I should be patient but I find it difficult when I’m touching you. When you’re in my arms like this I want to _push you,_ not wait. I want to _make_ you admit it.”

Fall to his death be damned, Trevor gathered his courage and stood, grabbing Adrian under his ass and lifting him up. He stumbled a few steps under the weight of him, _away from the edge thankfully_ , but he was able to steady his feet, turn and shove Adrian’s back up against the door that led into the castle. Adrian’s ankles were still locked around his waist, resting at the small of Trevor’s back and he was still nuzzling at his neck, laughing softly as he did so.

“It’s difficult to tell which one of us enjoys being hurt by the other more, Belmont. Or who is forcing who. Are you trying to shut me up?”

Trevor was _hard_ now. And he couldn’t say he exactly enjoyed how much it hurt to want so desperately to shove his dick inside Adrian and not immediately be able to do so. He lifted Adrian higher and canted his hips just enough to rub the tip of his cock, as it strained against his trousers, along Adrian’s ass. If they weren’t still dressed, Adrian would fall right on top of his waiting length and _god would that feel good._

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Trevor complained and he shoved his nose into Adrian’s hair, inhaling the wonder of it. “Enough fucking _talking._ Let’s get inside already before you get any more sunburned and _fuck.”_

Adrian dropped his legs and spun them so Trevor’s back was now against the door.

“I know that isn’t all you want, Trevor. You deserve so much more than a quick fuck. I know you _need_ so much more now…” Adrian nipped at the bruise on his neck and it _stung._ Shamefully, the pain only made Trevor’s cock harder and he was about to let whatever was going to happen next just happen, but when Adrian moved to lift him and hike him further up the wall, the Morning Star at Trevor’s hip grazed the bare skin at Adrian’s side.

Adrian gasped sharply and backed away.

Trevor reached down and rubbed the spot his whip had touched with the back of his knuckles. There was no mark left behind, but Adrian had definitely felt something.

“Did that hurt? It’s because you’re already sunburned, isn’t it? I told you we should go inside.” Trevor scolded. He removed the whip from his belt and held it away from Adrian. The response he got though was not what he was expecting.

Adrian swooped down again, mouth open, fangs out. Trevor braced himself for a deep bite but instead all he felt were the sharp tips just barely puncturing his skin. He shivered and Adrian’s teeth sank in just a little bit more, but not enough for anything satisfying. For either of them. And then Adrian pulled away to answer Trevor’s question.

“It did hurt.” Adrian said and Trevor felt an evil, _lovely,_ smile against the skin of his neck. “Now touch me with it again. _And let’s see who surrenders first.”_


	16. Sinner's Fall

Adrian lapped up the small trickle of blood at Trevor’s neck, like honey on his tongue, from the shallow nip he allowed himself. He waited for an answer or an action in response to his demand to take their newly discovered mutual desires to their inevitable, _and inevitably pleasurable,_ conclusions but Trevor just stiffened against him and then pushed him away with one hand, his other still holding the Morning Star at a distance.

They'd always pushed each other to their limits of patience, composure, sanity. But was Trevor hesitating now at the offer to delve deeper and explore their other limits? For a moment Adrian worried he might have actually crossed that ‘line’ his dear Belmont kept pretending to have as he clung to the ridiculous belief that he wasn’t every bit as much a creature of the night as Adrian was. The fact that they could both walk the days as well made no difference. It was the dark where they thrived, where the weak knew only terror but where _they_ knew freedom and abandon. Or at least the freedom to indulge in vice and depravity without threat of consequences.

Adrian decided to keep pushing, but only because he wanted more than simply sex. He wanted _all_ of Trevor, everything he showed and everything he kept locked away. So he reached out and ran his fingers along Trevor’s arm and then he grabbed hold of his wrist that held the weapon. Not enough for restraint and not enough to disarm him, but enough to make him squeeze the whip tighter on reflex.

“Let’s accept this for what it is _. Let’s accept ourselves.”_ Adrian curled his lip up in quiet disgust. “You can _think_ you want to be a tired, tedious, ‘pig in shit’ but I know what you are inside. I’ve seen you let it loose, I’ve felt you revel in it. Why deny it? What fear is there for us two? Do you fear the new god on some imaginary throne in heaven? The dead gods of the earth that languish un-worshipped? The dark gods of the ancients who let the night hordes run free? None of those deities mean shit to either of us. _We are unique._ Neither good nor evil. Both good and evil. We _choose._ For ourselves. I make my own decisions about who to love and how to love. _Will you?_ How long will you let your damn name rule you? _Pride goeth before destruction,_ Belmont…”

Adrian had barely finished saying the last syllable of Trevor’s name when their positions were suddenly switched. Trevor snapped his wrist out of Adrian’s hold and snapped the chain of his whip around Adrian’s own wrist. Trevor tugged tight, pivoted and, before Adrian could wince at the sting of the metal on his skin, he found himself pulled flush into Trevor’s body with his arm wrenched behind him.

 _“Pride goeth before destruction…”_ Trevor repeated, sinister and seductive all at once, _“and a haughty spirit before a fall,_ Alucard.”

Where a moment ago there had been an urgent but simple desire coming from the man before him, now there was something menacing lurking behind those eyes that were so pure blue they deceived with the feign of innocence.

Trevor tightened his grip on Adrian’s arm and electricity shot through him as every muscle and nerve in the limb railed at having to suffer the holy weapon’s touch. He let his head fall back against the door frame, breathing through the pain of the burn. It was Trevor’s turn to lean his head down and, as he pulled savagely again at his whip’s chain, he kissed, _tenderly,_ at the crook of Adrian’s neck. The calloused fingertips of Trevor’s free hand roamed up Adrian’s side and then around his waist drawing him in even closer.

When Trevor looked up at him, Adrian looked down into his eyes, those impossibly blue eyes. Trevor sounded serious when he spoke then, which by itself was a foreign inflection for the normally irreverent man to have. It made Adrian take notice and he listened intently, mesmerized by those oceans of blue and the deep, rumbling voice like storm clouds above the waves.

“You should be careful what you ask for, Adrian.” Trevor said. It was a dare, a threat, and then, he smiled.

Adrian was utterly disarmed by it. Wide and handsome. Confident, prideful, _dangerous._ There was no reluctance to be found in that grin, no bitterness or inevitability as the ghosts of Trevor’s sardonic smiles had always had before. And it certainly didn’t sound like there was any sort of imaginary line of propriety, where on one side lay right and the other wrong.

Trevor’s hand traveled farther up Adrian’s body while still using his other to keep his wrist immobilized. He gathered up a fistful of Adrian’s hair and forced him into a kiss. A deep, searing, breath-stealing kiss that Adrian could do nothing but moan into.

Still kissing him, Trevor released Adrian’s arm from behind him briefly to open the door to the castle and shuffle them through it. Adrian’s wrist was still caught up in the chain of the Morning Star and what followed was a dance of wills.

Trevor yanked and Adrian stumbled behind him down the hall until Trevor gathered him up again into another kiss, arms surrounding him, the stubble of his beard scratching him, teeth biting and pulling at his lower lip.

And then it was Adrian’s turn. He pulled his wrist free of the whip and lifted Trevor up off his feet so his legs wrapped around his waist and he rammed him back against another wall. Trevor grunted at the impact but he was still able to loop his weapon around the back of Adrian’s neck and he gathered the ends up into his fists. He rested his chain-wrapped hands on Adrian’s chest, between them, as Adrian pressed him more firmly into the wall.

The links of the whip cut into Adrian’s skin and they radiated a heat that made him feel like the sun was still burning down on him. He let their lips touch as he looked into Trevor’s eyes.

“You’re beautiful when you think you’ve got the upper hand.” Adrian said and, _damn_ _him_ , he was. Eyes bright, heart racing, chest heaving and lips curved up in demented delight, Trevor was _fucking beautiful,_ wild, chaos. It would be so easy to allow himself to be destroyed by the man completely. Giving up and giving in. Swept away and ravaged. _But where would the fun be in that?_

“What do you mean when I ‘think’ I’ve got the upper hand?” Trevor dropped his legs, pushed off and somehow came up with more length of chain, wrapping both of Adrian’s arms up behind his back now. The whip dragged at the nape of his neck, along his shoulders, down his clavicles and coiled around his upper arms. Adrian hummed low in the back of his throat at the feeling of the tight pull on his limbs and at the sight of Trevor licking his own lips before he spoke again in nothing more than a feral growl.

“You realize, people could say I’m the Belmont who conquered Dracula’s keep? _And his son.”_

They were close enough that even without the leverage of his arms, Adrian was able to lean his head down and graze his teeth against Trevor’s neck.

“You realize, people could say that I’m the vampire who enthralled the last Belmont?”

It was too tempting then, the smell of Trevor’s blood, and Adrian found he could no longer hold himself back. He bit in deep without another thought and the _fucking_ _divinity_ of it took his breath away. He indulged in one long swallow and then, reluctantly, he forced himself to stop after only that solitary hurried taste.

Adrian caught a flash of Trevor’s enraptured face at the sensation of the possessive bite, _and Adrian couldn’t deny it was entirely possessive,_ but the other man was quick to recover his poise and he tugged at Adrian’s bonds. Adrian hissed as he licked blood off his fangs.

 _“‘Enthralled’,_ huh?” Trevor smiled that devil’s smile of his and Adrian smiled back, letting his blood-drenched teeth show.

“Would you prefer _‘fucked into submission’,_ Belmont?”

“Oh, you _asshole_.” Trevor snarled and he released him abruptly from the whip. They danced again, pushing, shoving, kissing, through the castle. Belts were ripped free, boots kicked off. Trevor’s tunic. Adrian’s trousers, and then Trevor’s. They left a battle trail of discarded garments as they went, pressing heated skin against cold stone here and pressing into each other with heated passion there. With Trevor’s whip and Adrian’s fangs, each man kept the other in check, a delicate and deadly balance. They grappled and embraced, naked now, through the cavernous corridors and the only thing disturbing the still and quiet air around them were the gasps and grunts of their power play.

It was a mad and mindless rush for dominance, _and a mad and mindless rush to get to their bed._ But this was too good to stop, _too exhilarating,_ for both of them, each struggling step drawing the beast inside Trevor out more. And that was the truth of him that Adrian desired, the beauty of him.

They kept going. Adrian caught Trevor up in a light stranglehold from behind and dragged his aching cock up Trevor’s ass, skin to skin. Trevor snagged Adrian’s wrist again with his whip and Adrian was forced to rub his hand along Trevor’s own stiff length.

“Remember how this dick felt fucking you?” Trevor asked obscenely. “Did you forget _I’m_ the one who popped _your_ cherry?” Trevor rutted into his hand and though he was holding Adrian in place there, Adrian delighted in the feeling of his lover against his fingers. He did remember how it felt and it made his mouth water and his heart pound faster. “My cock is the only one that’s ever fucked you proper. And that’s the way it’s always going to be _because you’re mine Adrian.”_

Adrian’s chest filled and tightened with delicious emotion and he closed his eyes.

“You want me to fuck you again don’t you? Say it, Adrian, say you loved my cock in you.”

The Morning Star was unyielding around him and Adrian gasped, short of breath and short of resolve.

 _“Ahhhh.”_ He breathed out as he winced with the effort of obstinance.

Trevor just laughed darkly at him. _“God almighty_ I want to hear you plead. Hear you _beg_ in that ridiculous fucking regal voice of yours _. For me._ Would you beg me for more of my blood? You want it that fucking much? Is it that special?”

 _Yes...Yes! Fucking yes, it is! Unique. Special. Perfect._ Adrian wanted to shout it but he forced himself to stay silent, making Trevor work to earn his submission.

“What would your father say about us?” Trevor taunted. “He would have made me into ink for his quill and covers for his books and now here’s his son begging a Belmont for his blood? _For his cock.”_

 _One more push,_ Adrian thought. “Are you so confident you can make me beg?

_“Well, let’s find out.”_

~

Thank fucking god the bedroom was nearby. It was a goddamned miracle that Trevor didn’t give up and just fuck Adrian on the floor again of whatever fucking hallway they were in. But he really wanted to do this in a bed for once. _Fuck,_ he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d actually fucked in a bed.

And the word ‘fuck’ did not come even remotely close to describing what Trevor wanted to do to Adrian.

There was no profanity in Trevor’s vocabulary that did justice to exactly how absolutely fucking stunning Adrian looked, trussed up in his Morning Star. Trevor could hardly believe he’d let him do it. He could hardly believe he’d even wanted to do it himself. Smack Adrian across his smartass mouth? Yes. Endlessly. But threaten his safety with a consecrated whip? He almost balked at it.  

Trevor was floored to think of the trust in that action that Adrian had bestowed upon him. He couldn’t let it go to waste. This man trusted him and not only did he now know he was capable of living up to that trust, he _wanted_ to.

Trevor flung open their bedroom door, released Adrian from the Morning Star and flung him into the room. For a moment he considered just dropping the weapon, thinking it might only get in his way, but then he decided on something so much better.

Adrian stood exquisitely naked before him. There was already a fire in the hearth _-who knew how it got lit and who cared?-_ and the room was warm with just enough soft glow of amber light to see Adrian’s flush and the faint tremble of his chin with each expectant inhale of breath.

Trevor walked up to him casually and wrapped his whip loosely around Adrian’s neck. He draped the ends artfully over the man’s shoulders and down his chest like a token for a favored lover.

Or maybe a leash. Either way.

Trevor stepped back and watched Adrian’s chest rise and fall faster from the stress of bearing the contact of the weapon. He was grimacing slightly and his eyes were narrowed, though it was tough to say whether it was from annoyance or discomfort.

Trevor grinned and offered him an out. “Want it off?”

“Why would I want that?”

Of course the willful prick didn’t take his chance. Which suited Trevor just fine. “Good. Because I can’t wait to see you ride my dick while you’re wearing my whip.”

Trevor smothered Adrian’s smartass mouth in a kiss before he could say anything back. Now that they were in the soothing space of the bedroom, the rush of the fiery melee they had getting here was starting to calm into a steady smoulder and the thought of taking his time, luring Adrian in, moving him where he wanted, doing with him as he pleased and soaking up every needy plea he could force out of him was starting to sound irresistible.

So he just stood there and kissed him. First he cupped his jaw and moved his tongue in slowly. That got him a soft exhale. Then he kissed lightly but moved his hand down across the Morning Star and then over Adrian’s cock to rub just as lightly up and down. That got him a moan. Then he led him by the leash of the whip over to the bed.

Trevor sat at the edge and let Adrian stand between his legs. Trevor felt absolutely at his leisure and absolutely in control when Adrian fell to his knees and parted his lips over Trevor’s waiting cock. He took the time to twist the ends of Adrian’s long hair around his fingers and he enjoyed the hot breath ghosting over the head of his twitching erection.

At his leisure. In control.

Until Adrian smiled widely up at him, mouth full of fangs.

“You trust me quite a bit, don’t you, Trevor?”

_Oh shit. Shit! Fangs!_

Trevor almost leapt out of the bed, but Adrian’s hands were already on his thighs holding him down on the mattress.

_He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t play a game like that...would he?_

Trevor scrambled. “Woah...uh...wait, I just... _be careful…”_

He held his breath and was too terrified to move even a fraction of an inch. He frantically tried to keep his dick as still as fucking possible, which was _fucking impossible_ as Adrian licked at the tip and then dove with a smirk to take Trevor in his mouth and down his throat in one impressively skilled movement.

 _“Ahhhhh…”_ Was the only sound Trevor could manage as panic and pleasure warred inside him. On instinct he’d convinced himself he would feel something sharp where he _never wanted to fucking feel anything sharp ever,_ but instead all he felt was heat, _amazing, blissful heat,_ and a slick tongue working him back and forth.

 _“Oh hell…”_ This was better than anything he could have hoped for, though he should have expected nothing less from the wonderful creature on his knees before him. Trevor bit out another curse, and then he fell back on his elbows. He would have fallen bonelessly backwards completely, head lolled and arms splayed, if he wasn’t so transfixed by the sight of Adrian sucking him off.

The heat of him. The slide of his tongue. His fucking gorgeous eyes gazing up at him. The chain softly clinking around his neck. It was all _so fucking good._

Adrian brought one of his hands up to stroke at Trevor’s cock each time he pulled his lips back to the tip so not one inch of it was wanting of attention at any point. His other hand massaged along the inside of Trevor’s thigh, his strong fingers working the muscles there as diligently as his mouth was working.

When Adrian pulled off him completely and leaned back on his heels Trevor exhaled in heady satisfaction, but then his breath hitched when he felt the faintest, well-controlled, caress of teeth at his tip, almost like a _reminder._ There was no pain, but another brief shot of panic streaked through Trevor nonetheless.

Adrian moved his hand along his cock to soothe the imagined hurt and he laughed at him. His smile was so beautiful and his eyes were so fucking lovely though, Trevor didn’t really mind the slight. Until he threw a familiar sounding accusation up at him.

 _“Do you think I can’t suck a dick properly?”_ Adrian said.

Trevor allowed himself his own laugh. “Just keep minding your fangs, will you?”

Adrian lazily continued to stroked him and he rested his chin on Trevor’s thigh. “You mean these?”

One hand still on his cock, Adrian pulled at Trevor’s leg with his other hand, exposing the tender angle at the very top and he hovered his teeth over the spot. Trevor shivered, then stiffened, but Adrian only stroked him faster and more firmly, passing his thumb over the slit and making Trevor swallow down a moan. And then Adrian spoke, his slick lips tickling at Trevor’s skin.

“Do you know where all your arteries are, Trevor?”

Trevor was trembling now, but he couldn’t look away from Adrian’s hand moving up and down his length and the man’s fangs lingering threateningly over an artery Trevor knew was there but had certainly not ever envisioned being vulnerable like this.

 _“Shhhhh….”_ Adrian whispered when Trevor couldn’t stop one of his hands from pulling on the pale waves of his hair and gripping the sheets with the other. “I won’t hurt you, love.” He practically cooed the soothing words, and strangely, Trevor’s breathing did slow, and his hands relaxed. “At least not too much…”

Before Trevor could even call him an asshole, Adrian opened wide and sunk his teeth into Trevor’s leg.

Trevor fell back flat on the bed and reached his hands up into his own hair. He screwed his eyes shut.

“Oh god...Adrian...oh _god…”_ He didn’t even know what he was saying. He didn’t care. Adrian stroked his cock relentlessly in time with his swallows. There was a piercing pain at first, like a sharp and dissonant chord but, as Adrian continued, the sensation morphed into a single, clear, tenor note that made _that feeling_ start in his core and rise up quickly through him. And then the song of Trevor’s torture changed into something more complex. A layer of the original sharp pain, then a layer of steady ache, and now yet another, the frantic cacophony of Adrian bringing him off with his hand, faster, harder as he drank from him.

Trevor arched his back and thrust his hips up into Adrian’s hand. Fresh pain spiked through him as the motion only made his fangs plunge deeper, but _dear fucking god, it felt so good._

“I... _shit..._ Adrian, please…” Trevor panted and implored. “Please...faster, harder...unnnnn….” Adrian obeyed the order immediately. He stroked him faster, bit him harder. “Please...more...yes...yes, I... _fuck_ I'm gonna come…”

Trevor cried out in shocked rage when Adrian slipped his hand right off his cock and pulled his fangs out of his leg with no apology but a sharp inhale and a lick of his lips. Adrian sat back, then stood.

Trevor sat up, sweating now, vision blurry, dick _throbbing_ in protest from being denied his release. He almost grabbed Adrian by the ears to pull him back down on his cock so he could _take_ his fucking orgasm, but Adrian had other plans. Still wearing Trevor’s whip, he climbed up onto the bed and straddled him, forcing Trevor to move to accommodate the position. He backed up onto the pile of pillows at the head and watched Adrian maneuver himself.

He had no will left in him to object to having stopped so abruptly because the fucking scene before his eyes now more than made up for it. Adrian’s face was a mess of lust and blood. His hair was in tangled disarray. The chain of the Morning Star around his neck was shameful and erotic and it forced Trevor to focus on _not_ coming when Adrian sank right down on his cock without warning or preparation.

They both cried out in pain and ecstacy, Trevor at the intense heat and tightness, Adrian at the intrusion he clearly hadn’t been ready for.

Adrian bent forward, his eyes squeezed shut, and he spread both his hands out on Trevor’s abdomen. He was breathing heavily and keeping himself still. Trevor swallowed resolutely and commanded every muscle in his body to remain just as still to give Adrian some time. They stayed like that, neither of them moving, until Adrian opened his eyes and looked into Trevor’s.

Trevor wanted to speak, but he had no words. No words existed to express what he felt just then. Joined with Adrian, sharing... _everything._ Showing this man things about him he didn’t even want to see himself. Letting him in, in every way possible. Pushing boundaries, testing lines, breaking down walls.

Trevor didn’t speak. He just brought his hands up into Adrian’s hair, and then gently, as gently as he could manage, he leaned forward and kissed him. Adrian accepted it, accepted him, as he always did and after enjoying one more tender moment, he leaned back and moved his hands from Trevor’s stomach, behind him, to the tops of Trevor’s legs.

The position made Adrian’s spine arch and put on display the long line of his neck, chains and all. He was commanding and captivating in his disinhibition when he threw his head back and started moving.

Trevor was mesmerized by each slow rise and fall of Adrian’s body. Watching his cock disappear inside Adrian and watching the man’s muscles strain beautifully as he fucked himself on Trevor’s cock was a sight he would see in his dreams forever.

He didn’t know how he was still holding out but suddenly, making Adrian come like this while he watched, making him beg for it like he said he would was what Trevor wanted most in this world. He took pleasure in watching Adrian’s cock bob up and down, hard and wanting, for one moment longer then he took him in hand.

Adrian groaned and dug his fingers into Adrian’s thighs as Trevor tugged roughly and the sight of that was even more beautiful still. Adrian riding him, crying out for him, losing himself to him. It made Trevor stroke him faster and start thrusting up into him.

And then Adrian finally gave in.

“Ahhhh...Trevor...Trevor please, please, _fuck me harder…”_ He growled, frustrated, needy. _“Fucking hell_ make me come, Trevor, please, _please…”_

That was all Trevor needed to hear, and all he could take. He gave in too.

Trevor gathered up Adrian as carefully as he could so as not to separate them and he flipped him onto his back. He pinned him down with the full weight of his body and he started fucking him into the bed. Adrian’s cock was trapped between them and Trevor slid himself along it with each deep and forceful thrust until Adrian stiffened, shouted and then spilled himself in shuddering convulsions. Adrian breaking apart beneath him broke the last of Trevor’s restraint and with one more shaking snap of his hips he gave in, surrendered and fell from his peak right alongside Adrian.

When it was over, when their minds came back to them in pieces ready to be picked up again, Trevor could do nothing but pull his whip off Adrian and then wrap his arms around him. He knew the other man could take his weight, could lie there underneath him all night like that if it came to it, and maybe that’s what Trevor wanted.

Until just that moment, Trevor hadn’t realized how broken he’d been. His whole life, broken. Wandering the world, broken, sometimes doing good, sometimes doing bad, but broken all the same. He never knew how broken he’d been until just that moment as he was reforged.

When Adrian’s arms came up to hold him and they settled in to sleep, it occurred to him that, actually, they’d both been broken. In different ways, for different reasons, but broken all the same.

 _Not anymore though,_ Trevor thought. And then, for the second time in one day, he drifted off into unconsciousness, in a bed, _this same bed,_ easily, comfortably, happily and...and something else too that he decided he should probably tell Adrian when they woke up.


	17. Soul's Redemption

Trevor woke with soft blond hair tickling his nose and teasing his lips. He nuzzled into it, breathing deeply and stretching his stiff limbs. He felt rested, renewed, comfortable...and disgusting.

A slightly sticky film of debauchery covered him from head to toe. Old sweat, dried spend, crusted blood and who knew what the fuck else from all the demon fighting was making his scalp itch and his skin feel clammy. Not to mention, the sheets they were on should probably be set on fire. It all would have felt more familiar to him if the sour taste of cheap booze coated his lips too instead of the wisps of Adrian’s hair. As it was, because of that simple substitution, this experience felt wholly new.

He wiggled some more on the bed, enjoying the laziness of just being there, somewhere safe and cozy, somewhere between silky hair and plush sheets. Ruined or not, they were still nice sheets. At some point in the day, night, whatever time it was, they’d shifted their positions such that Adrian was still on his back but Trevor was pressed to his side, one of his legs thrown across Adrian’s thighs and one of his arms thrown across his chest holding him tight and effectively trapping the man with the fussy sense of smell in all the stink.

“If you’re finally awake, _get off of me._ You smell terrible.”

And that was probably the ‘good morning’ he deserved given the state of them both but he decided not to listen. Instead, he pulled Adrian closer and continued to rub his face in the man’s hair like a rooting pup.

“Uh-uh, _you_ smell fucking fantastic still. I don’t want to get up.”

Adrian made a token attempt to squirm away which was funny really because they both knew he could throw Trevor and his unpleasant odor across the room if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He let Trevor continue to do what he was doing. He huffed about it though.

“These sheets are unsalvageable. And I want to bathe. Immediately.”

Trevor’s ears perked up at that suggestion and he lifted his head to look at Adrian’s face. He didn’t look nearly as annoyed as he was trying to make himself sound. His freckles, sadly, had disappeared but there was a subtle fondness behind his eyes and a wry quirk to his lips that betrayed him. Either Trevor was definitely getting better at reading him, or Adrian was slacking on his distant mysterious vampire act.

“Can we go down to that heated bath hall I was in before? Because that might be my favorite room in this whole damn place.”

“You don’t have to _ask_ me, Trevor. You can go wherever you please, whenever you please.” Adrian did push him away then and slid off the bed. “This is your home.” He said quietly as he walked away, then quieter still he corrected himself, “Our home.”

In the absence of Adrian’s hair, Trevor buried his face in a pillow, clutched at the mussed bedding, and marveled at how fucking _insane_ this all was. Such novel sentiment, such strange emotion, in this unlikely place with the most unlikely fucking person imaginable. Taking his life as a whole, however, it was possible things could have turned out no other way. Who was he to question fate now that it had finally let him have a fair shake? He turned his head when he heard Adrian shuffling about the room. He was standing by a large wardrobe and pulling out clothes.

_Nope. That won’t do._

Trevor propped himself up and tried to stop him without surrendering the comfortable spot he was sunken into on the bed. “Wait, come back, don’t get dressed yet. What about morning sex? Let’s have morning sex first. I’ve always wanted to have morning sex.”

They were already a mess, so why not? They could have a bath after. And he felt not one ounce of guilt over trying to take a mile after the inch fate had given him.

Adrian looked over at him with what appeared to be disappointment and he frowned. “Having sex with your physiologically mandated diurnal erection is a fantasy for you? _That's_ what you’ve ‘always wanted’?” He shook his head and turned back to the wardrobe. “Trevor, if that is the best erotic wish you can come up with then we’re going to have to expand your horizons considerably if we mean to keep this interesting between us.”

 _Well, shit._ He certainly wasn’t going to turn that down.

“Okay, yeah, no objections then.” Trevor reluctantly extracted himself from the bed and stood. “But can we still have morning sex at some point too? My morning wood doesn’t really care how boring you think he is, he’d still like some attention.”

“If you’re a good boy, I’ll fuck you in the bath. Now come along.”

Adrian tossed a pair of trousers at him, slipped into his own pair and closed the wardrobe. Adrian’s clothes were just a touch long in the leg for him, but they fit fine otherwise. Trevor raised an eyebrow and waved his hand at Adrian’s bare chest. “Do you have something against shirts?”

“We can see if any of mine fit you, but your shoulders may be too broad. As for me, I’d prefer not to wear one right now. My skin is still sensitive from the direct sun exposure. _And your whip._ But it will heal soon.”

Trevor winced, just now noticing the pink and slightly peeling sunburn on Adrian’s torso and a suspiciously chain-shaped pattern of even angrier looking red welts on top of that.

“Shit. I’m sorry…”

Adrian walked over and kissed him lightly and casually. Casually, as if they woke up like this every morning. Casually, as if they could wake up like this every morning from now on.

“Trevor, don’t.” Adrian lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across Trevor’s lips effectively brushing away his remorse. “It feels _good._ ” Adrian said it with wide eyes and wonder as if coming to some sort of sex epiphany. “Weren’t you the one who told me it's nice to feel the consequences of rough love-making the next morning? This is a new experience for me and you were right. It _is_. ‘Nice’.”

Trevor’s chest swelled with smug pride and his dick swelled in remembrance. “Did you just admit that I was right about something? _And_ that I fucked you so good you’re still feeling it?”

Adrian turned away with a roll of his eyes and walked out of the bedroom. “As I said before, you are a very clever boy, Belmont.”

Trevor’s grin disappeared and he followed, pointing a threatening finger that Adrian wasn’t even looking at. “I swear to Christ, Adrian, if you call me _‘boy’_ one more time, I’m going to make you pay for it.”

“Oh? How exactly?” Adrian kept walking, sounding bored now. How the man managed to piss him off and turn him on at the same time was a mystery he wasn’t sure he wanted to delve into in any detail.

Trevor thought for a moment on ‘how exactly’, then decided on his killing blow. “Don’t even think about shoving your damn furry ears at me again wanting a scratch.”

Adrian stopped walking.

With a wicked grin, Trevor nodded. “Yeah. That’s how. And how fucking shameless are you anyway? Does it really feel that good?

Adrian didn’t look at him, but Trevor heard a smile in his voice. “You can't imagine how good it actually feels.”

Trevor lowered his head and fought back another childish smile. It seemed it was a morning for admissions. He remembered he had his own to make, he just needed to figure out how to do it right. There was no end to the list of things he’d fucked up in life. He didn’t want this to be one of them.

~

Trevor said he wasn’t hungry and Adrian had eaten enough of Trevor for his hunger to feel satisfied for quite some time, so they went straight to the bath hall.

Adrian had woken up long before Trevor had, but he’d made no move to get out of bed. He just laid there, underneath Trevor’s leg and wrapped up in Trevor’s arm with his hot and steady breathing puffing against his neck through his hair. He needed the time to collect himself. They’d fallen asleep together but it wasn’t the sort of sleep Adrian usually experienced. Vampires always maintained a low level of consciousness as a defense mechanism, even when they entered the deep sleep of recuperation. It wouldn’t do for a species so vulnerable to certain things to pass out so completely that someone could set them on fire as they dreamed. Whether Adrian slept as a human, or as a vampire, he was never totally unaware.

Not so last night in Trevor’s arms. He’d passed out entirely, feeling entirely at ease. It was disconcerting at first, but after some consideration he realized that those few hours of sleep tucked up against Trevor’s body had been more restful than any months-long epochs he’d ever spent dreaming alone.

Trevor rambled on and on about nothing as they walked to the baths. He complained about having to find his things they’d abandoned all over the castle. He whined about not having revisited the wine cellar yet. He demanded to be allowed to stay in the bath as long as he wanted.

It was amusing, pressured speech and Adrian let him have his awkward turn with it. If there was something actually meaningful he meant to say amidst all the nonsensical prattle, he was sure he’d get around to it eventually. As Adrian had already told him. He had nothing but time.

A plume of heavenly heated steam greeted them when Adrian pushed open the doors to the baths. Trevor let out a long dramatic groan that he could only interpret as pleased contentment. He walked across the large room while Trevor immediately stripped, dove into the hottest pool and dunked himself under. Everything at least smelled better after that so Adrian was finally able to breath easily. He pushed at the switch on the far wall that slid a hidden panel of doors open revealing a low lying sun beyond a balcony outside. The view was striking and Adrian got naked again as well to take a spot in the bath next to Trevor, so he could watch the late afternoon sun dip towards the horizon.

“Huh. So, I guess it's not really ‘morning’.” Trevor commented when he surfaced, water dripping from the ends of his dark hair. “That damn bed makes me want to sleep too much.”

Adrian eased himself further down into the scorching water. He whistled softly and winced as he submerged his burns but his desire to scald off the layers of vice plastered to him outweighed any discomfort he might suffer.

“You would prefer to sleep on the floor perhaps? Or outside on the ground? Feel free but I won’t be joining you.”

Trevor waded over to him and slid one hand around to rest at the small of his back. His touch was careful as he slotted his legs in between Adrian’s and he avoided disturbing the burns on his chest. In a low voice, with his brows drawn together, Trevor challenged Adrian’s assertion.

“I don’t believe you. I think you’d join me if it came to it.”

It was a serious statement Trevor made, not a joke or a lighthearted slight. There was no mockery in his eyes as Adrian settled his hands on Trevor’s waist and studied his face. It seemed like the man holding him was somewhere between telling and asking. Equal parts resolved and fearful, hopeful and resigned. Adrian responded as he’d been responding since he decided to follow this path. He responded as he always would, however many times Trevor needed to hear it.

Trevor tried to move in to kiss him, better at action than talking, _or listening,_ but Adrian stopped his advance with a finger on his lips.

“If that is a question, then let me answer properly.” Trevor frowned, but he listened.

“Vampires are a long lived species. It is possible I will follow after my father and live even longer still. But with the gift of time comes a bottomless chasm to fill, Trevor.” Adrian closed his eyes. _“And you cannot fathom what that is like.”_

He lowered his head and couldn’t stop himself from imagining what it would be like to just fall down into that empty pit, tumbling headlong with no handholds, and no purpose beyond marking the passage of innumerable days, months, years, alone.

Trevor tilted up his chin so they were eye to eye again before Adrian could lose himself anymore in supposition or projection and he lost himself in the blue of Trevor’s eyes instead as he continued.

“I have time, Trevor. Time enough to mean this when I say it, every time I’ve said it. I love you, deeply and completely. In defiance of all that is sane and reasonable, _I love you_ and will love you across the endless time at my command. So you are correct. Given everything I’ve already surrendered to you, surrendering a _fucking_ bed is a trivial thing at best.”

For a fraction of a second, Trevor paused, then he dug his fingers into Adrian’s back as if trying to gain purchase on something solid to save him from his own fall and he pulled him into a kiss. Adrian gasped into his mouth when Trevor pressed their chests together bringing his burns to attention, but even that felt good. The heat of his mouth, his tongue swiping and his teeth nipping. The heat of the bath and the heat on his skin, marked and claimed by Trevor.

“We’re staying in the fucking bed, Adrian.” Trevor mumbled into their kiss. “Now come on. Have I been a _good boy_ or what? I expect you to keep your promises.”

Perhaps Trevor only meant for Adrian to keep his promise to fuck him in the bath, but something about him seemed different as they plundered each other’s mouths, splashing water onto the tiles and not caring if their loud moans were carried up to the vaults by the rising steam. He seemed open, not closed off. Free, not bound. Fearless and not paralyzed by defeat, asking Adrian to keep his promise to love him through the curse of time, demons and darkness that they’d both suffered through alone and now could endure together.

Adrian laughed. He laughed as he turned Trevor to face the sunset, and bent him down against the edge of the pool until he had to brace himself with his palms and forearms flat on the tiles. Adrian slid his fingers over Trevor’s hips under the water to hold him still and kissed a trail up his spine. He spoke against wet skin and licked at the beads of scented water running down his back.

“I’ve been doing nothing but declaring my love for you, Belmont. Like a simpering fool, I’ve been pining and _fucking fawning_ all over you. It is _humiliating_ yet still, I love you, you absolutely infuriating, terrifying, _fucking_ _beautiful_ human being.”

Adrian stopped to stare at the scar on Trevor’s shoulder from his first time. He suddenly wanted to erase that memory of getting fucked by another and replace it with only memories of getting fucked by him. He wanted Trevor to know pleasure on his cock and his alone, for all time. On a proprietary whim, Adrian bit down on the scar and Trevor hissed out a curse. The taste of him was the only thing he ever wanted on his tongue ever again, he thought, as he continued his unrepentant declarations.

“I love every fucking scar you have and every inconsiderate thoughtless fucking word of bullshit you utter. I love your insolence and your strength. I love your ignorance and your passion. I love you, _gods above,_ I love you, Trevor…”

Adrian shifted beneath the water, gripping Trevor’s hips harder, unable to stop himself. He kicked at Trevor’s legs, spreading him wide apart and he shoved himself deep inside.

Trevor went rigid beneath him, stifling a cry as he bit down on his knuckles. “Fuck, Adrian, _fuck!”_

Adrian curled over him and nearly sobbed against the back of Trevor’s neck. The tight heat was so intense, and so fucking perfect, that if Adrian closed his eyes he would swear he was burning up from the inside. Maybe he was. Maybe Trevor would be the death of him as he flippantly told Sypha. This man broke down every carefully crafted belief he’d ever had and swept away everything he thought was real. Only this was real to him now.

A hushed reassurance was all he could manage, to help Trevor relax back against him. “This is where you belong, love. Only I can make you feel this way. You want everything I have to give you, don’t you? _Even when it hurts._ I’ll give you anything, _do anything._ Do you want it rough? Or slow? I swear, I’ll make you feel so _fucking good,_ you’ll forget your name is Belmont.”

“Adrian…” Trevor growled, raw and desperate. _“Just fucking stop talking and move!_ Fucking hell, I’m _dying_ , _please,_ if you don’t start moving, I’ll fucking go nuts. Just fuck me _, hard,_ please…”

Adrian’s heart was pounding, his cock was throbbing, his mind was spinning, but he immediately obeyed that fucking lovely plea from the lips of he who was now most precious to him. He moved. In deep, _hard_ thrusts he moved in and out, snapping his hips against Trevor’s trembling body with force enough to make the man bow his head down and brace himself.

Before Trevor could get comfortable again or acclimate to the exquisite agony, Adrian adjusted his angle and his speed. He read each hitch of Trevor’s breath and each bitten-off moan so he could draw out their pleasure as long as possible. He was so focused on his task he barely noticed when Trevor reached back to dig his fingers into Adrian’s hips, urging him on and he hardly registered the sound of sloshing water when Trevor frantically started tugging himself off.

“Oh, fuck, Adrian, yes, _christ almighty, yes…”_

Adrian wouldn’t last. His vast reserves of control were tapped and spent. Each word Trevor said as he fucked him was like fuel on the fire. He was a dry forest of tinder and every cry from his lover was a spark igniting a fresh blaze.

“Trevor, I can’t…” He was overwrought, defeated. “I have to...please, let me come inside you... _please…”_

“Fuck, Adrian, yes...god I love you, _I love you…”_

_~_

In the end, Trevor could only be who he was. Unplanned, unintended but _honest_ and with everything he had in him, he’d let it slip out. It wasn’t how he’d wanted to say it, mad with lust and _on fucking fire_ with Adrian balls deep inside him. He’d wanted it to sound better, more clear, more sure than that inadequate and stuttered confession. Adrian deserved more, but maybe this was all he had to give. He’d never be able to wax eloquent about this as Adrian could, as Adrian did. All he could do was say it and hope he believed it. Then he’d just have do everything he could for the rest of his life to make sure Adrian kept believing it.

Adrian’s climax came crashing into him before Trevor could repeat out loud the words that kept repeating themselves in his head. The man shook behind him, and thrust in one last time before he spilled. Trevor felt split apart, rent asunder, and he had just enough agency over his muscles left to drag his fist along his cock one more time before he spilled too.

With each sharp pulse of their bliss, rolling in synchrony, in perfect rhythm, Trevor felt so loved it _hurt._ Just like Adrian said it would. Like an ache and a fear tangled up together in cords of longing. And yet, even with all those dire emotions conquering him, when Adrian bit into his neck, gently, tenderly this time, he was driven to smile with boundless hope and a crazed sort of giddiness.

Trevor went limp in Adrian’s embrace, happy to let him take his time, relax back down to normal and drink his fill. Trevor almost thought he could fall asleep like that. Dizzy and sated and warm and loved. When Adrian finally pulled out and pulled away, they both laid back and floated in the water, looking up at the ceiling and out at the now purple horizon.

Trevor spoke first.

“I think instead of getting clean, we made the bath a disgusting mess now too.”

Adrian seemed unconcerned despite his usual fastidiousness.

“Mm. You do tend to drag everyone down into the muck with you, but it’s no matter. When we leave, it will drain and refill. So we can do this here as many times as you want.”

Trevor chuckled. “Do the same thing again? What happened to all the kinky shit you wanted to ‘expand my horizons’ with?”

“The castle has entire rooms dedicated to just that. And rest assured there are many creative ways I can make you tell me you love me again.”

Trevor righted himself and grabbed Adrian by the arm so that they were both now upright and facing one another. He couldn’t afford to be hesitant now and he couldn’t afford to be misunderstood. Not when those gold eyes were looking back at him with such openness.

“Listen to me, Adrian…” He started, but _how to continue?_

This man took him as he was, invited him in, sacrificed for him, cared for him, loved him. He’d done what no one else had ever done or would ever have bothered to do for him.

“I’ve...I’ve never said that to anyone, do you understand? _No one._ So don’t think it was said without...without _intention.”_

Adrian raised his hand out of the water and threaded his fingers though Trevor’s wet hair. Trevor tilted his head back a little into the massaging motion.

“I know, Trevor. I know.” Adrian said softly. “And no matter what, I swear, your _‘intention’_ towards me will never be misplaced. I’d sooner die before I let my darker half lead you down that path to hell your family so feared.”

Trevor couldn’t help but laugh outright at that.

“Oh please. If there is one thing I know for sure it’s that your ‘darker half’ doesn’t hold a fucking candle to the shit stains most humans are. Hell is other people, Adrian. Compared to that, this right here is heaven. Or at least as close as the two of us are ever going to get.”

Trevor leaned in to kiss him then and he realized he meant every word of that. Other people and their glares. Other people and their judgements. Other people and their selfish, thankless, evil fucking natures. Other people who threw torches into homes with children still inside. Other people who burned beloved mothers and wives alive at the stake. All of it was hell on earth and he’d been living in the fucking thick of it his whole life. But none of that had any hold over him any longer. Adrian looked at him differently, _Adrian was different,_ and it made Trevor look at himself differently.

So this time it was Trevor’s turn to admit that Adrian was right. Loving each other in particular made all the difference in the world.

Trevor let him go and smiled, easy and carefree. “Now, come on. I’m fucking starving. How about you?”

Adrian stared at him, dumbfounded, and Trevor watched as he licked off a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth.

“I…” Adrian frowned. “How exactly would you like me to take that question?”

Trevor laughed again and took his hand to lead him out of the bath. “Literally, actually. Man shall not live on blood and sex alone. Or vampires shall not. Or whatever you are. I don’t care anymore. Let’s go.”


	18. Storm's Eye

Trevor kept hold of Adrian’s hand as they walked from the baths down to the kitchens.

He allowed himself to be led around, pleased that Trevor was fast becoming able to navigate the maze of corridors with some amount of independence. He hesitated only a few times at intersections with several directions. Rather than take over the lead, however, Adrian drew him into a kiss each time, making sure to wordlessly turn him towards the proper hallway upon release.

Aside from wanting Trevor to feel more in command of their now mutual domain, Adrian couldn’t deny it was intoxicating following along in his wake. And now that he knew what it felt like to actually be intoxicated, he was confident about making the comparison. There was something frightening and dangerous about it, but something else that was exhilarating.

For all their past bluster, and all their feigned belligerence, Adrian felt at ease sharing space with him, touching, being touched and having Trevor welcome it. He could take a kiss when he pleased, a nip when the urge took him, or even simply glance knowingly in his direction and receive a grin in return. It was an intimacy curiously unrelated to sex that he never expected to have with someone. Remembering back to his life one year ago, alone and bereft, roaming these halls with only his own malcontent, this quiet connection to another soul seemed unthinkable.

Not to mention, just being there next to the man, without either of them insulting, inflicting bodily harm or outright trying to murder each other was so surreal that Adrian still didn’t quite comprehend it fully.

He felt as if they were walking in a halcyon dream and he wondered how long they could dare to enjoy it.

Trevor didn’t seem to share his trepidation. It was possible that this general state of vague bewilderment was how he felt in most situations. In fact, it was highly likely considering what an unpredictable existence the Belmont name had forced him to live. Which was probably why he was still holding Adrian’s hand, wind at their backs, happy to have a direction even if he didn’t know where it led and even if he ultimately had no control over it.

 _Take nice things when they come to you and don’t complain,_ Adrian thought to himself. That’s what Trevor would say, he was certain.

When they entered the kitchen wing and heard three familiar voices though, Trevor grunted and complained.

“Guess we still have freeloaders.”

“I believe you mean _'friends’,_ Trevor.”

Trevor paused and gestured at the door with his thumb. “More than half of those people in there wanted us both dead at some point. It’s possible all three of them wanted us both dead at some point, I don't know, and I’m scared to ask, because Sypha might finally admit to it. So one of them better have at least made dinner already.”

Trevor pushed open the door and they joined their friends. Adrian hadn’t realized how he and Trevor would appear to the others in their current state until they walked - _limped actually-_ slowly into the the light of the heartfire and were greeted by Sypha’s shocked exclamation.

_“What on earth happened to you two?”_

They looked at each other and then down at themselves. They were wet, hair in tangled tendrils, feet bare, necks bitten and bruised, sunburned, chain-marked, well-fucked _and happy._

When she noticed the ‘happy’ part, her initial shock died down and she _‘tsk’_ -ed at them.

Trevor rubbed at the back of his neck, avoiding her accusatory gaze. “Uhhh…”

“Is that a question you really want an answer to, Sypha?” Adrian felt the need to rescue Trevor from admitting the extent of their sexual creativity.

“That is not a question any of us wants an answer to, Alucard, thank you.” Isaac apparently felt the need to come to Sypha’s rescue. He was seated at the large table with a drink in front of him. And it appeared that someone had indeed prepared dinner because the table was laden with food. Isaac took a leisurely sip from his cup, then he asked a more practical question. “I trust the two of you have... _come to terms_ with things?”

“We have, thank you Isaac.” Adrian said. “And we owe you a debt of gratitude for your assistance to that end. I would like to extend an invitation for both you and Hector to stay here at the castle if you so desire. Recent events notwithstanding, this is perhaps the safest place for you, having effectively thrown your lot in with us. And I believe that my father would have wanted you both to cultivate your knowledge and your talents, so the libraries here are at your disposal.” When he felt Trevor scowl beside him, he added, “Within reason, that is. And only if Trevor agrees also, of course.”

 _“Trevor_ agrees to nothing of the sort.” Trevor was quick to pull back the invitation and he pointed at Hector. “That one tried to kill me.” Then he pointed at Isaac. “And that one turned my family into zombies. Fuck ‘em both. They’re on their own.”

Hector, who was seated beside Isaac, stood. He still bore the visible scars of his captivity and Adrian dared not think on the scars he bore that were not plain to see, but he at least appeared more rested, and a subtle flush had come back into his cheeks. He was not so stupid to think time would heal the man completely but what time had a chance to heal, he wanted to offer it to him, somewhere safe and somewhere he too once called home if only briefly. Adrian was reassured that might be possible because when Hector spoke it was with conviction.

“I was not in my right mind when I attacked you, Belmont. Alucard was able to pull me back from a brink crafted of my own foolishness that I was unequipped to escape from on my own. I owe him my life, such as it is. And as he said, I have many talents that would be of use here.”

More slowly, he continued. “I’ve found I have no love for the world beyond these walls.” His eyes grew unfocused and they drifted off to gaze past them at nothing. He sat and when he returned from whatever memory he allowed to capture him, he was resolute once again. “I have a debt to repay and I am prepared to atone for my actions towards you in any way you see fit. I regret what I did.”

Isaac, on the other hand, and quite unsurprisingly, relaxed back in his chair.

“I regret nothing. You would have gotten all of us killed had I not raised your people from the earth, Belmont. And you should be thanking Hector for assuring that they continue to serve a pure and honest purpose, as should be the aspiration of all beings. I have no love for the world I’ve seen beyond these walls either, but it is a wide world. Had Dracula not chosen to travel, he and I would never have met, and my life would have been lesser for it. There are many things yet to learn and perhaps a purpose yet to find. Purity comes from purpose and power from knowledge. Dracula had both. It is something to aspire to.”

“Ipsa scientia potestas est.” Trevor mumbled as he reached over and picked up Isaac’s cup then sniffed at it.

When everyone just stared, slack-jawed at the casual, _surprisingly knowledgeable,_ loose translation, he huffed.

 _“What?_ I’m perfectly competent with _Latin_ for fuck’s sake! Just because I can’t read every dead cult language that ever existed doesn’t mean I’m a complete idiot. What are you all drinking by the way?” Trevor swirled the contents of the cup around. He took an experimental swig and his eyes lit up. He pounded a fist to his chest and whistled at the spirit’s burn.

Hector offered him a full cup of his own and said, somewhat proudly, “It’s grain alcohol with honey. I fermented it myself. I was surprised to still find a few bottles here. It was a favorite of your father’s, Alucard. Do you like it, Belmont?”

Trevor pulled over a small bench and sat down next to Sypha, taking the cup from Hector. He had another sip, then quickly and predictably, he welcomed Hector home. “Alright, fine, you can stay.”

Adrian refused his own mug. “No, thank you. Belmont will be drinking for the both of us.”

“I’ll be careful, I’ll be careful.” Trevor waved away the implication. “You just try not to get all bitey this time. We’re in polite company.”

Sypha coughed to conceal a snicker as she handed Trevor a plate of food to go along with his drink and his sarcasm.

Adrian gave him a wry smile. “Should you get deep enough in your cups to affect my mental state, I have every confidence you’ll be able to restrain me.”

Sypha dared a hesitant inquiry. “Do I even want to…?”

_“No.”_

The word was a unanimous chorus from Adrian, Trevor and Isaac.

Mouth full of food, Trevor then picked back up on a topic Adrian wished he‘d let slip past him. The man was unsettlingly astute when he wanted to be.

“So, _Hector,_ what exactly did you mean when you said Alucard was ‘able to pull you back’?” He spoke to Hector but he slanted his eyes sideways at Adrian.

He’d hoped to avoid this, but now that it was clear Trevor was itching for a confrontation about it, he gave in.

“Subtlety does not suit you, Trevor. You obviously assume I influenced Hector away from Carmilla by taking his blood, which I did. It should also be obvious, given the state you found us both in when you _finally_ arrived back here with your undead army, that I did not take enough to exert control, nor did I take enough to replenish my own losses. As such, it was an act borne of necessity, nothing more. It is done. Let it be.”

Adrian wanted to take his own advice on the matter and move on, but he found himself holding his breath until Trevor spoke again.

“It’s amazing how much ‘necessary’ blood drinking goes on around here.” He grumbled, but he shifted down on the bench to make room for Adrian to sit beside him.

Adrian exhaled. “Indeed. And you started it _.”_

“Hey, that’s _his_ fault, remember?” Trevor nodded his head at Hector and he grumbled again. “Not that it matters now, since everything worked out I suppose.”

Isaac chimed in at Trevor’s grudging admission. “In choosing a partner who is half vampire, Belmont, I would think you would be more accepting of the realities you face. The need for blood drinking being foremost among them.”

Adrian took issue with that statement. The only reality Trevor needed to face was that Adrian Tepes wanted Trevor Belmont’s blood and his alone. And neither would anyone else ever drink Adrian’s blood.

“I have no intention of taking anyone else’s blood from now on.” He said firmly. “My father was the same with my mother. While she lived, he took only from her. She insisted on it and he never wavered from that promise. After she died, he never drank from another human again.”

Sypha shook Trevor by the shoulder. “Aw, that’s romantic! Isn’t that romantic, Trevor?”

But Trevor wasn’t about to allow Sypha’s flight of fancy at his expense.

“No. It’s morbid. And you...” He turned to Adrian. “Can you _please_ stop comparing us to your _parents_ , for Christ’s sake! If I vomit tonight, I want it to be because I drank too much of this.” He tapped his mug then took a long drink, his previous promise of temperance forgotten.

“Belmont, I don’t think you realize the position you’re in.” Hector interjected with what Adrian assumed were good intentions but he doubted Trevor would see it that way. “Especially after killing Carmilla and scattering her forces, there are many vampires, and humans too for that matter, who would do anything to take your place as Alucard’s consort.”

Trevor sputtered and sprayed the drink in his mouth across the table. “His... _what?”_

Isaac seemed to agree with Hector on the matter. “Vampire alliances between great powers are often forged in the same ways as human ones. _Through marriage._ You came from a noble house, Belmont. You should know this.”

Trevor pounded down all the alcohol left in his mug then pounded it back down on the table. _“Listen here,_ I am as much this asshole’s ‘consort’ as I am the king of fucking France, and the next person to even suggest it is getting kicked the fuck right out of this castle. After I finish eating.”

Sypha patted him condescendingly on his back. “Well, I still think it’s romantic. So, practically speaking Treffy, if you two are planning on monogamous blood exchange, you’ll both need to keep up your strength. I have a recipe for a tonic I can write down for you that will help. We make it for women who’ve just given birth. It replenishes the body’s elements and builds strength and endurance quickly after blood loss.”

It was one helpful comment too far. Trevor slapped his hand on the table.

 _“Jesus fucking Christ,_ shut up! Everyone just _shut the fuck_ _up_. I am not a pregnant woman, Sypha. I am a grown man who fucks up demons and who also happens to be fucking him now.” He jerked his chin at Adrian. “My elements are fine, my strength is fine, my endurance is _perfectly fucking fine_ and I don’t need any help replenishing anything, _thank you.”_

Only Sypha could have persisted in this line of discussion with impunity. Which was exactly what she did. Adrian decided to dispense with moderation. He filled Trevor’s cup himself in silent encouragement to indulge as a comfort measure while Sypha continued being ‘helpful’.

“Now that you mention it, you are very good at tolerating losing blood. Is that a Belmont thing? Because if it’s a family trait, it’s pretty well-suited.”

Hector piled on right after Sypha. “I helped Dracula with research once on the topic of blood substitution and regeneration.” He leaned forward in his chair and Adrian noticed that his eyes had brightened. “There are alchemical processes to fortify blood, possibly similar to your tonics, Sypha. And there are also transmutation spells to sustain life on other substances in the absence of blood for short periods of time. Do you know if there were alchemists in your family, Belmont?”

Sypha laughed as Trevor glowered. “Go ahead and keep it up with the unnecessary questions. You’re all gonna find yourselves sleeping out in the snow tonight.”

Hector, eager now and engaged rather than detached and distant, kept up with the unnecessary questions in spite of Trevor’s empty threats.

“The extent of the Belmont archives is beyond any human collection I’ve ever seen. Have you spent much time going through the shelves? If you’re interested in the work your family did, I would be happy to…”

Hector continued and Adrian rose to step away and leave them to it. He knew the entire conversation had turned uncomfortable for Trevor but he thought it would be good to let the man remember he had roots that shouldn’t be forgotten. If it helped Hector also to help Trevor explore those roots, all the better.

He was starting to feel lightheaded as a result of Trevor’s drinking but it was nothing unmanageable and certainly nothing like the raging bloodlust he’d experience from their previous shared intoxication. The current feeling was pleasant in fact, and he enjoyed the warmth of it in his chest. He decided to walk over to the hearth stones to warm his feet as well.

Isaac joined him and spoke low, only to Adrian.

“Is there something different about his blood?” He asked pointedly.

Adrian was just inebriated enough to answer honestly. “I’m in love with the damn fool. It is impossible for me to answer that question objectively.”

“You should allow Hector to study the archives then. If Belmont is a curiosity, he is now a curiosity with your blood in him. Which means he has something of Dracula’s blood in him. That fact should not be ignored. He may be your lover but he is also an asset to your rule.”

Adrian sighed. “We’ve been over this. I may have been forced to announce myself and I may be forced to continue to keep the power mongers in check and protect the castle against them but I will not actively rule over the creatures of the night as my father did.”

“We _have_ been over this, and you _must_ rule. The reign of Dracula had permanence and stability. Until it did not and you’ve now seen the consequences of the uncertainty that followed after. _Your_ reign must be absolute. You must restore that permanence and stability. It is what they expect. Sheep must be herded whether they think they need it or not.”

When Adrian just looked into the fire and did not acknowledge the role Isaac seemed to think he must fulfill, Isaac played a hidden card.

“There is something you and Belmont should see outside, Alucard.” He raised his voice in an announcement for all to hear.

After being stuck between Hector and Sypha’s foray into magical research, Trevor practically jumped from his bench.

“What is it?” He asked. “Can I kill it?”

Isaac led them all away from the warm and friendly atmosphere of the kitchen. “As with most things you are accustomed too, Belmont, ‘it’ is already dead. Follow me.”

Adrian and Trevor detoured to retrieve the rest of their clothes and then they all walked outside. Hector and Sypha had exchanged a cagey look right after Isaac’s announcement so Adrian assumed whatever they were going to see had been discovered by the three of them earlier in the day while he and Trevor were sleeping.

Though it was night now the temperature was rising slightly in the start of a slow climb towards spring. The snow on the ground was melting into muddy patches. The moon was full and bright above them. It illuminated starkly the dead things Isaac mentioned.

Namely, six severed heads impaled on tall pikes stuck in the ground in view of the castle’s front doors.

“What the hell is this?” Trevor put a hand on his Morning Star that was strapped once again to his hip. He approached the heads warily. On closer inspection, each had a crucifix stuck into one of its eye sockets. They must have all been priests. It looked as though they’d been exposed long enough for crows to pick some flesh from their faces but they were still fresh enough to be recently deceased. And they were slightly shriveled, pale and dry. It was a sign that all the blood had been drained from them prior to decapitation.

After he looked over each one, Trevor turned back to Adrian, his face serious and his wits sharp, not even a hint of drunkenness from Hector’s liquor.

“Is this a threat?” He asked, his eyes darting across the Belmont ruins and into the forest, trying to search out unseen enemies that might be lurking in the shadows. “Or is this some fucked up statement of vampire disapproval?”

Hector answered him. “It isn’t a threat, Belmont. Far from it actually. This is a tribute.”

Trevor’s brow furrowed, and his lip curled up. He looked caught somewhere between concern and disgust.

“A _tribute?_ Are you serious? Like a _‘please look favorably upon me oh vampire lord of the big scary castle’_ sort of tribute? Because, you know, gold or nubile virgins or something is more along the lines of what I would consider a tribute.”

Adrian shook his head. “I was afraid this might happen.”

“You were afraid we’d find staked, severed heads in our front yard? That seems an oddly specific fear. And one you might’ve mentioned earlier.”

“Vampires would pledge their fealty to my father in this manner. It is a tribute specific to me and my parentage.”

“Well, we definitely don’t need to recruit any vampire vassals. So whoever left these can kiss our asses and fuck right off.”

“They do not need recruited Belmont.” Isaac argued. “They are already starting to fall in line. It is in both of your best interests to let them. Fear will keep the peace and keep the life you wish to build here safe. For the most part at least.”

“Isaac is probably right but you should still take them down in the morning, you two.” Sypha’s advice was offered as an end to the gawking and she put her arm around Trevor’s shoulders to lead him back inside. Hector followed, leaving Isaac and Adrian to linger.

Adrian was reassured that their victory over Carmilla was decisive enough to instill this sort of acceptance by those who would have otherwise threatened them, but he’d hoped for longer before the world intruded on them again. It may start with tributes, but he knew other things would follow. He’d seen it as a child. Peeking around corners and listening through closed doors, hoping his mother wouldn’t find him eavesdropping, the solitude of Dracula’s keep and their idyllic ‘normal’ family life that Trevor enjoyed ribbing him over was occasionally interrupted by the trials of his father’s station.

Vampires would find them when the castle kept to one location for long enough. Petitioners would attempt to curry favor, disputants would argue, supplicants would beg. More often than not, Vlad sent them away knowing Lisa wanted something different for the three of them than the life of a demon warlord inside his keep of horrors surrounded by bloodsuckers and beasts.

But Lisa wasn’t a Belmont. More than anyone, Trevor knew what he was getting into. Still though, how long would he tolerate vampires bringing corpses to their doorstep? They couldn’t move the castle now, or the Belmont hold and they could not leave this place to be guarded only by a sleeping zombie horde bound by black magic. More would inevitably come and the situation would have to be managed, lest it get out of control again and turn into another threat like Carmilla. In short, Isaac was right.

But if Adrian ended up accepting that he must rule with absolute control, would Trevor eventually tire of it? Would his ‘subjects’ notice it? Trevor disapproving, disgusted and... _human._ There would be questions. Never to his face. Of course not. But they would surface nonetheless as they always had with his mother. A slow erosion of power, of the respect and fear he’d just won. Insidious and unrelenting.

_What is he doing with him?_

_Why is he keeping him like this?_

_When will he turn him?_

“Will you turn him, Alucard?” Isaac asked, his eyes hard and unblinking. It was as if he’d read his mind and it was frightening to realize exactly why his father had respected this man enough to keep him alive even when he’d wanted to eradicate all the rest of humanity.

Adrian opened his mouth to say _‘no, never’_ but the words caught on his tongue. “I...it...it is not what he would want.”

“If you truly love him, that shouldn’t matter.”

 _Was that true?_ Or was it actually the opposite? He wasn’t sure he knew anymore. Things were simple when he and Trevor were alone, in the quiet of only their two pounding hearts it was easy to ignore the storm outside. His heart was certainly pounding now, and it was heavy with an icy fear of losing everything. He could feel the sword of Damocles hanging just above him, cold and merciless, waiting to fall.

“There is no exit from this path, Alucard. You can only forge ahead and perhaps...” Isaac stopped, his sentence unfinished.

_Hadn’t he said exactly that to Trevor before all this started?_

“Perhaps…” Adrian pressed. Isaac’s words were now somehow of vital importance and he wanted his advice more than anything. It was a far cry from taking the man by his throat and tossing him outside on his ass for speaking truth only days ago but quite a lot had happened since then.

“Perhaps you’ll find another way.” Isaac shrugged. “Perhaps the Belmonts _are_ different. Perhaps your Trevor is different. Or perhaps it matters that your circumstances are different. Who is to know?”

“Perhaps.” Adrian echoed again. He felt unsettled and wanted nothing more than to join Trevor back inside, to lose himself in the quiet and the calm.

Isaac sighed and then looked Adrian in the eyes. “It is good Hector is staying. He has no mind for strategy, but he is a brilliant scholar. Your father respected his understanding of the dark arts. Let him explore your libraries and Belmont’s archives. What he learns, whatever that may be, might be of use to you in the future as you walk your path. As for me, I want to travel, but I may yet return here also. For all your knowledge and your power, you are young still. And I will not have my dear friend’s son go without counsel if I can provide it.”

“You and your counsel are always welcome here, Isaac, thank you.”

They said nothing more to each other about things too far in the future to argue about with any certainty. They joined their friends back in front of hearth and food and drink. They drained Hector’s home brew down to the last drop and Trevor made him promise to cook up more in the morning. Sypha’s easy, relaxed laughter as she drank and joked with Trevor was like a lullaby and it soothed Adrian’s unrest. Isaac’s presence was reserved for the remainder of the evening but his loyal maturity was reassuring. Hector was open and shy by turns but it was a start and Adrian felt sure that what brambles the man had grown tightly around himself like strangling weeds would unfurl and bloom wide if given the chance.

And Trevor got Adrian fabulously drunk. Red faced, grinning and stumbling drunk. But it wasn’t like before. There was no beast trying to break free and no unmet urges threatening to surface. They need only speak, or glance or breathe in the other’s direction and desires could be let loose without one second wasted on doubt.

Which was exactly how they made it back up stairs to their bed. One look, one unspoken need and dozens of stairs later, Trevor counting each one and cursing as they climbed. Or, as Trevor climbed and Adrian was dragged along with him because he’d long since been able to manage walking effectively. Like before, Trevor didn’t seem as bothered by the effects of the liquor which Adrian was doubly grateful for when they finally managed to undress and climb under _-clean-_ sheets.

Trevor perched over him, laying kisses up his neck and down his chest. Adrian was so dizzy he felt like he was floating and spinning at the same time, all while burning up under Trevor’s touch. Rough fingers up and down his legs, sharp stubble grazing his skin and a slick tongue lapping at all his sensitive spots. Adrian let himself melt into the mattress, uncaring and unconcerned about everything besides the man above him.

“Trevor…” Aridan breathed out. “Love, I don’t think...I don’t think I can…”

All he felt like he could do was lay there and give in. Thankfully, Trevor was more than happy to take advantage of that.

Trevor laughed at him. “I know. You’re too drunk. It’s a double-edged sword sometimes when you’re not used to it. Just let me handle this. Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.”

And he did. Simply. Slowly. Softly. Gently. Trevor worked him open, body and soul. Broke him down, pleading, begging. Thrust inside, pitiless and punishing. Drew him out, crying, screaming. Brought him down, soothingly, tenderly. And held him close afterwards, lovingly and steadfastly.

“Sorry I got you drunk again.” He apologized, though it was completely unnecessary. He rolled them over so Trevor was flat on his back and Adrian was tucked into his side, head nestled in the crook of his neck. Trevor had one hand holding him tight as his other hand rested on his own abdomen. Their legs were intertwined and Adrian could feel Trevor’s breath in his hair.

“If you fuck me like that every time you get me drunk, all will be forgiven.”

Trevor laughed, and of course agreed. They were both quiet for a few minutes until Trevor spoke again.

“So, severed heads on pikes aside, we should be good for a while, right? No invasions or curses on the horizon?”

“I suppose.” Adrian was too drunk and too happy to speak at all about what he and Isaac had discussed. The maelstrom would swirl back around and catch up with them in time. Obsessing over it wouldn’t make it come any sooner or later. “Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to try and rebuild the manor.” Trevor sounded decisive, but then he wavered a little. “Not the whole obnoxious thing, but, you know, most of it, at least. So there’s actually some kind of house over the hold’s entrance. And we could connect it to the castle or...or something. I dunno. Just a thought.”

“We can start first thing in the morning.” Adrian said and even though he couldn’t see it, he felt Trevor smile.

Adrian put his hand on top of Trevor’s where it lay on his abdomen. He rubbed the back of it absently with his thumb. He was drunk and tingling and exhausted, but what he felt, or rather _didn’t_ feel as he brushed across Trevor’s skin gave him pause. He had to stop himself from sitting up to see for himself if it was real or only a figment of his alcohol-addled mind and wishful thinking.

Trevor’s boyhood scar, the very first one that Adrian had touched, on the back of his left hand from his father’s whip, the first one that had spoken to him and spoken of their bond, _was entirely gone._ Old and faded though it was, Adrian knew it should be there and he knew for certain it now _was not._ The skin was smooth and unmarred beneath the pads of his fingers.

He stroked back and forth along the spot, over and over, trying to convince himself he was mistaken without disturbing Trevor, who was snoring softly now and already halfway lost in dreams.

Disjointed bits of conversations from earlier passed through his thoughts. Was Belmont blood different? Would he turn him? Trevor had his blood in him. He had Dracula’s blood in him. And time. So much time ahead of them. Vast epochs of potential for glory or disaster balanced on a knife’s edge.

Adrian was having trouble thinking and sorting through it all. He was sated and happy. Sleep beckoned. Dreams he could join Trevor in called to him. Maybe he was mistaken, and if he wasn’t, Trevor had so many scars. Would he even notice that this one had finally healed over and faded away?

Right before he drifted off to sleep, he promised himself he would tell Trevor about it in the morning. For however much a drunken promise was worth.

Everything was quiet right now, clear and beautiful. Even if it was the storm’s eye they were in, he wanted to enjoy it while it lasted.

~

Trevor dreamt he was somewhere in the castle. In a dark hall full of doors. He couldn’t recall seeing a room like this yet, but for all he knew, there probably was one, and for all he knew each door opened up into a different level of hell. Or maybe they all opened up to hot baths and shelves full of wine. He’d much prefer that.

He stood for a while, waiting. Adrian was three sheets to the wind and had already been half asleep on his chest, so he was hoping he’d join him soon. Awake or asleep, Trevor felt better when they were together now. He felt full and complete and invincible.

It wasn’t long at all before, true to form, a white wolf appeared and padded over to stand next to him. Trevor scratched behind his ears.

“So does one of these doors lead somewhere good?” Trevor asked the beast. “Like a field full of manna and honey or something? Because that would be a nice change.”

Adrian walked away and sniffed at each door. He pawed at some, nudged his nose at others, growled at a few and then sat down in front of one of them.

Trevor went to him and turned the knob. The door opened into a forest. Their forest in fact. The woods of the Belmont estate. The ruins of the manor were in the distance as was the castle looming large and dark beside them. The moon was high in the sky and the night was warm and clear where they were standing but there looked to be clouds gathering near the black horizon. A storm was probably coming, but Trevor Belmont had never feared thunder, nor lighting, nor rain.

Trevor walked through, into the forest and Adrian followed, but after only a few steps the door slammed shut behind them and then, it started to disappear.

Adrian snorted and howled, looking back and forth between Trevor and the fading door. Trevor walked up to him, knelt and ran his fingers through his soft fur. He stroked his flanks until he settled and then he touched his wet nose to his own.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” He told the wolf, and when the door was completely gone he stood. Adrian stood as well, a man now, gold hair and gold eyes shining in the moonlight. Trevor smiled at him.

“Come on, love.” Trevor said and he took Adrian’s hand. He nodded his head at the castle and the clouds in the distance. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading from the bottom of my heart! I really enjoyed writing this story (and I kinda want to keep writing for these two!) and every kudo and comment meant the world to me. Thank you all so much! With love, RHR <3


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